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Perfectly Quiet: The Intertestamental Period Part 8
Episode 122 – Perfectly Quiet – The Intertestamental Period 8
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: (Bible quotes from the Good News Translation)
The LORD Almighty answers, “I will send my messenger to prepare the way for me. Then the Lord you are looking for will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger you long to see will come and proclaim my covenant.”
But who will be able to endure the day when he comes?
Malachi, Chapter 3, verses 1 and 2, Good News Translation
********
VK: Hello. I’m Victoria K. Welcome to another episode of Anchored by Truth. Today we are concluding 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. Next time we will begin a new series we call “But what about?” which will explore various topics found in the Bible that people sometimes find puzzling. For instance we are planning on doing one or two episodes on “but what about heaven and hell” and “but what about angels and demons.” But, for today, we’re going to close out this series on the intertestamental period. I’m in the studio today with RD Fierro, author and Founder Crystal Sea Books. RD, would you care to say a word of greeting and introduction?
RD: Greetings to all the Anchored by Truth listeners. We really appreciate you taking some time to be with us for this episode. We know that anyone who takes the time to listen to Anchored by Truth only does so because they have a sincere interest in knowing the Bible better because the single focus of Anchored by Truth is to demonstrate, as our opening says, that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. That truth used to be commonly accepted but it’s not today. So, to hold to that truth requires both commitment and courage.
VK: RD, throughout this series we’ve been talking about the intertestamental period. And I think we’ve seen that even though no new books of the Bible were being produced during this period that this was a key period in Biblical history. Can you give us an overview of why you thought it was so important for us to take an in-depth look at this period?
RD: Sure. The short answer is that the intertestamental period was the period in which a number of Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled. If we don’t know anything about the intertestamental period’s history, we will miss important instances of prophetic fulfillment. Also, during the intertestamental period changes occurred in and around Israel that affected the world in which Jesus lived His earthly life. If we don’t understand those changes we miss important events that prepared the world for the arrival of the Messiah. So, to close out our series I want to emphasize those points by thinking about two hypothetical scribes – one scribe who lived at the very beginning of the intertestamental period and one scribe who lived at its end. Let’s call our first scribe, Ariel and our second scribe Zedekiah.
VK: We think of a “scribe” as someone who is a writer or a stenographer but you’re using the term as it was used in the Bible. A scribe was someone who was an expert in the Jewish scriptures and law.
RD: Right. So, let’s say Ariel was a scribe who lived in Jerusalem around 425 B.C. I want to think about the world in which Ariel lived and, more importantly, what Ariel knew about the progress of the plan of redemption.
VK: Well, first, Ariel knew that there was a plan of redemption because the plan had been launched in Genesis, the first book of the Jewish scriptures which we now call the Old Testament. And, at the time Ariel lived all of the books of the Old Testament had been written though scholars differ on when the first compilation was actually made. But in Ariel’s day the final books of the Old Testament, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi, had just been completed. So, at least all the books would have been available in one form or another.
RD: Yes. The books had all been written though as you say the first complete compilation into a single volume as we know the Old Testament would not have been available. For instance, in the Jewish scriptures the books we call Ezra and Nehemiah were generally thought to have been a single book and even in the various compilations that were produced the order of the books sometimes varied. But the main point is that Ariel has access to the entire Old Testament. As such, and since Ariel is an expert on those books, Ariel would have known that a large number of the Old Testament prophecies had been fulfilled.
VK: Such as the prophecy contained in Isaiah 44:28 where God told Isaiah “When I say of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd,’ he will certainly do as I say. He will command, ‘Rebuild Jerusalem’; he will say, ‘Restore the Temple.’” Ariel lived at a time when he had seen, or more probably his grandparents had seen, the Persian Emperor, Cyrus, conquer the Babylonian Empire. Very shortly after he did so Cyrus issued a decree that allowed the Jews in exile in Babylon to return home and to begin rebuilding their temple.
RD: Right. Ariel, his parents and his grandparents, had seen a number of Old Testament prophecies fulfilled during their lifetimes. They had seen that, even though the Babylonians did not initially destroy Jerusalem, they finally did as prophesied by Ezekiel. They had seen that the Babylonian exile had lasted about 70 years as prophesied by Jeremiah. They saw the Babylonian Empire fall to a confederation of the Medes and Persians as prophesied by Daniel. And they had seen Babylon fall in the exact way Isaiah had foretold. In Isaiah 44:27 God has said, “When I speak to the rivers and say, ‘Dry up!’ they will be dry.” The way the Medes and Persians bypassed Babylon’s impregnable walls was by diverting the Euphrates River that flowed under the wall. Then, when the river bed was dry they just marched under the wall into the city.
VK: And our fictional scribe, Ariel, now lived in a mostly rebuilt Jerusalem. The temple had been finished around 515 B.C. but the walls of Jerusalem weren’t finished until 445 B.C. So, Ariel lived in a walled city although it wasn’t nearly as grand as the pre-exile city had been. And Ariel lives in a city that is part of the Persian Empire. Israel is not an independent nation although they are enjoying some degree of autonomy in their daily lives and religious practices.
RD: Right. So, Ariel has seen a number of prophecies contained in his scriptures come true. But Ariel also knows that there are a large number of prophecies he can read about that haven’t come true. The prophet Daniel has prophesied that the Persian Empire will be conquered by the Greeks, but in Ariel’s lifetime the Persian Empire is at the height of its power. Greece is just a disjoined group of warring city states that aren’t a single country much less a threat to the mighty Persian Empire. And, as Ariel looks out over his city from the temple mount, the biggest prophecy of all – that a Messiah would come to deliver His people – remains completely unfulfilled.
VK: And maybe worse for Ariel he has the prophecy from chapter 9 of Daniel to deal with. That prophecy said that 483 years had to elapse from the date a decree was given to rebuild Jerusalem and restore its moat and city square before the Messiah, the Chosen One, would arrive. And to compound this dilemma there were four separate decrees issued by Persian emperors that had to do with rebuilding either the temple or the city. So, Ariel can’t really even be sure which decree is the one that starts the 483 year time clock ticking.
RD: Correct. But, Ariel has seen a number of very specific prophecies fulfilled so Ariel has good reason to believe that the other prophecies he knows about will also come true. But Ariel has no idea that the most recent books he has seen added to his scriptures, Ezra-Nehemiah and Malachi, are going to be the last of God’s special revelation for a very long time.
VK: A period of over 400 years. That’s almost 200 years longer than the United States has been in existence. Hopefully, Ariel has a comfortable life because neither his children, grandchildren, nor great grandchildren are going to see the prophetic fulfillment of many prophecies which are very important to them.
RD: So, now let’s leap forward to Zedekiah, our hypothetical scribe who lives at the very end of the intertestamental period. Like Ariel, let’s say Zedekiah lives in Jerusalem and he lives at the time that John the Baptist has just appeared on the scene. John the Baptist has just started his pubic ministry and is just starting to create a buzz among the common people. Zedekiah isn’t a skeptic but Zedekiah, as an expert in the scriptures, feels that he has to be far more cautious before he places his trust in this strange guy who lives in the desert, wears a camel hair coat, eats locusts and honey, and is telling everyone they need to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Let’s see what Zedekiah knows that Ariel didn’t.
VK: Well, Zedekiah now knows that just about every prophecy in the book of Daniel has been fulfilled with a staggering amount of precision. Unlike Ariel, Zedekiah has seen the Persian Empire fall to the Greek Empire. And Zedekiah knows that that conquest occurred within a remarkably short time period – just over a decade. Zedekiah also knows that there was only one great king of the Greek Empire, Alexander the Great. Zedekiah knows that the prophecy that said Alexander’s empire would be split into four parts has come true. And Zedekiah also knows that the Greek Empire has been replaced by the Roman Empire. So, Zedekiah can see the series of four world empires prophesied by Daniel in chapters 2, 7, and 8 of his book has all been fulfilled.
RD: And Zedekiah has seen that the prophecies in Daniel chapter 9 through 12 have been partially fulfilled. Zedekiah has seen that the struggle between the king of the north and the king of the south described so clearly in chapters 11 and 12 has unfolded just as prophesied in the conflicts between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. So, Zedekiah can see that a great many more prophesies contained in the Old Testament have been fulfilled between Ariel’s time and his time.
VK: And this was one of the big reasons we undertook this examination of the intertestamental period. If we don’t know anything about the intertestamental period we miss seeing an amazing number of prophetic fulfillments.
RD: Right. But, like Ariel, Zedekiah has not seen any of the prophecies related to the coming of the Messiah being fulfilled. Like Ariel, Zedekiah is still awaiting the promised Anointed One who will deliver his people. But unlike Ariel Zedekiah can see that the prophesied 483 time period between the delivery of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the arrival of the Messiah has largely elapsed. Zedekiah knows that it has been more than 400 years since Darius and Artaxerxes issued their decrees concerning Jerusalem. So, Zedekiah could have good reason to believe that the arrival of the Messiah might be very close at hand.
VK: Just as Nicodemus seems to have. Nicodemus said plainly to Jesus that they, the Jewish leaders, knew Jesus had come from God because of the miracles Jesus had done. The perceptive Jews of Nicodemus’ day knew all that our hypothetical Zedekiah did. And, when the Jewish leaders saw John the Baptist begin his ministry apparently many of those leaders wondered exactly that. In the first chapter of his gospel John says that the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites out to ask him whether he was the Messiah. John of course said that he wasn’t. But he did say that he was the Elijah-type messenger that Malachi prophesied would arrive just before the Messiah.
RD: Right. So, Ariel and Zedekiah both stood at crucial intersections of history. Ariel stood at the intersection where a 1,000 year period of God’s special revelation came to a close and period of revelatory silence was about to begin. In Ariel’s day it had been a little over a thousand years since Moses had first assembled or written the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible. And the 400 to 450 year period of the intertestamental period was about to begin. Zedekiah stood at the end of that period and where a new period of special revelation was about to begin. It would begin first with John the Baptist breaking the period of revelatory silence. John obviously was receiving communication directly from God because he told his followers he was able to identify Jesus as the Messiah because of the sign he had been given that the Spirit would come down and rest on Him.
VK: But John the Baptist wasn’t the only one that God was communicating with directly in that day. John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, had a visit from Gabriel. Gabriel told Zechariah of the coming birth of John the Baptist. And there were two elderly people, Anna and Simeon, who received messages from God about Jesus and recognized Jesus as the Messiah when he was a baby.
RD: Correct, but Anna and Simeon’s messages from God were more for the purpose of authentication than proclamation. And Zechariah’s message was more for preparation. It was John the Baptist who came forth in the mold of the Old Testament prophets and really broke that extended period of prophetic silence. What I want us to see is that the intertestamental period created those prophetic intersections. The opening of the intertestamental period inaugurated a period of prophetic silence, the close marked the end. What I think is useful for us today is to examine what the people who lived at those intersections knew and how what they knew affected their faith. In part, I think this is useful because it is fair to say that we live in another period of prophetic silence.
VK: What you mean is that the canon of scripture closed almost 2,000 years ago, right? It’s not that we don’t have a special revelation from God. We do. It’s called the Bible. But the period we live in resembles the intertestamental period because new special revelations are not being added currently. Do I have that correct?
RD: Exactly. In fact, it’s been almost 2,000 years since the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, was written. So, this period of revelatory silence has gone on 4 to 5 times longer than the intertestamental period. But during this period we have seen additional prophecies fulfilled. Some of these were prophecies contained in the Old Testament but some were provided in the New Testament.
VK: Such as?
RD: Such as Jesus prophesying about the fall and destruction of Jerusalem.
VK: You’re thinking of Mark, chapter 13, verses 1 and 2. “As Jesus was leaving the Temple that day, one of his disciples said, “Teacher, look at these magnificent buildings! Look at the impressive stones in the walls.” Jesus replied, “Yes, look at these great buildings. But they will be completely demolished. Not one stone will be left on top of another!”
RD: Yes. Jerusalem was completely destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Roman general, Titus, who later became emperor. But let’s get back to Ariel and Zedekiah for a moment. As we mentioned in their hypothesized settings both knew about prophecies of a coming Messiah but neither had seen His arrival. But if Zedekiah lived for a few more years after he saw John the Baptist appear on the scene Zedekiah would have seen dozens more Old Testament prophecies come true in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It’s just that Zedekiah, like most Jews of his time, would have seen the prophecies come true in an unexpected way.
VK: Faithful Jews like Zedekiah very much expected the Messiah to be a conquering political and military figure. But in His first coming Jesus came to conquer sin and death – arguably a task that’s immeasurably harder than just conquering a country or empire.
RD: Yes. So, as we stand in our own period of revelatory silence we have the advantage not just of seeing that the vast majority of Old Testament prophecies have been fulfilled, but also many from the New Testament. But like Ariel and Zedekiah there is one great prophetic hope that we have and for which we are still awaiting fulfillment.
VK: I’m sure you mean the second coming of Jesus. Believers have been looking forward to that since Jesus’ ascension and the angels asked His disciples why they kept looking at the sky. Then they added, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Ever since that minute believers have wondered when He would come again.
RD: That is the hope I’m thinking about. There are many different opinions on many matters relating to eschatology but all commentators are agreed that at some point Jesus will make a physical return to the Earth. And when He does He will usher in the time of final judgment and separation of believers from unbelievers. So, we, in our day, are different from Ariel and Zedekiah in that they were looking forward to the first coming of the Messiah. We look back to Jesus’ first coming. But we are the same as Ariel and Zedekiah in looking forward to the Messiah righting all wrongs, providing rewards to His servants, and restoring the heavens and earth to an uncorrupted state. That’s one of the reasons I think it is a good idea for contemporary believers to study previous periods of Biblical history like the intertestamental period. We can get so lost in our own time and troubles we can forget that God’s plan of redemption is still firmly on track and that He will complete it at a time that He has already chosen.
VK: So, what you’re saying is that in order for us to persevere in our faith we need to have an eternal perspective. We need to see beyond the trials and temptations that surround us day-to-day. It’s certainly not that those trials and temptations are unimportant but if we want to be victorious over them we need to remember that it is God who will provide the victory. But how can we be confident that God will provide the victory if we don’t have confidence in God’s promises. And the place where God’s promises are contained is the Bible. So, we need to ensure that we are firm in our minds that the Bible is God’s word. It’s one thing to answer yes to the question, “is the Bible the word of God?” But it’s another thing to be able to answer the follow up question of “why do you believe that?”
RD: And, oddly enough, studying the intertestamental period increases our confidence in the two testaments. And thinking about the challenges believers faced at each point in redemptive history helps us be much more secure and effective in our own place in redemptive history. Christianity is a faith rooted in time and place. It’s not a faith that asks its believers to suspend their critical facilities. To the contrary, as we discussed in a previous episode of Anchored by Truth we are commanded to love God with all our minds. A huge part of the confidence believers should have is knowing how we today fit into the unfolding of redemptive history.
VK: So, are we more like Ariel or Zedekiah?
RD: I think we’re more like Zedekiah. At our place in history we haven’t had a direct revelation from God in almost 2,000 years. Zedekiah knew God had been quiet for over 400 years but right before John the Baptist started his ministry Zedekiah had no way of knowing when God would break His silence.
VK: Oh. I think I see where you’re going with this. When God did break His silence He gave the world so much more than just another earthly political leader. God gave the world the means to transcend the sin and death that had plagued mankind since the garden. So, while Zedekiah wouldn’t know it until after the resurrection something far more amazing than just a military conquest was right around the corner.
RD: Precisely. I’m well aware there are a wide variety of views on eschatology in our day and time. Probably the dominant view in our day and time is that the next event of redemptive history is the rapture – the removal of the church before the great tribulation. But not all Biblical scholars believe there will be a rapture or a literal millennium of Christ’s reign on this earth. But all Christians agree that Christ’s physical return to the earth is an event that we can and should anticipate eagerly. And as Jesus emphasized, other than the Father, no one knows the day and time that will happen. It could be tomorrow. It could be today.
VK: So, we need to be about the business of ensuring that we are ready for Him to return. That’s not something that anyone else can do for us. We must do it for ourselves. That’s the reason regular Bible study and meditation are essential to our maturity as Christians. Other people can answer questions and point us to helpful resources but we are the only ones who can absorb it and apply what we learn to our lives.
RD: Amen. Today we used Ariel and Zedekiah as hypothetical examples of people who lived at particular times in Biblical history. But there were real people who did live at those times and places who had the same kinds of questions that we do. Zedekiah lived in an era when God’s prophetic silence was broken but it’s interesting to think about what Zedekiah might have wondered right before that happened. Did Zedekiah wonder whether God was ever going to keep His promise to send a Messiah? Did he wonder whether God’s revelation was ended for all time? His scriptures told him differently but did he believe them. Our Bible tells us Jesus is coming again. We live in an era when we’ve seen a physical nation of Israel restored to its homeland. So, we’ve seen things that some people only dreamed about for over 1,900 years, but never happened. What’s next for us? The one thing we know for sure is that Jesus is coming again. We have hundreds of fulfilled prophecies from the Bible that assure us that at some point God will interrupt the daily activities of this world in an amazing and powerful way. We too could be the people who witness that.
VK: Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer of for our kids who will soon be starting school because we certainly want God to both guide, inspire, and protect them.
---- CHILDREN STARTING SCHOOL
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!”
(Bible Quote from the Good News Translation)
Malachi, Chapter , verses 1 and 2, Good News Translation
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Episode 122 – Perfectly Quiet – The Intertestamental Period 8
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: (Bible quotes from the Good News Translation)
The LORD Almighty answers, “I will send my messenger to prepare the way for me. Then the Lord you are looking for will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger you long to see will come and proclaim my covenant.”
But who will be able to endure the day when he comes?
Malachi, Chapter 3, verses 1 and 2, Good News Translation
********
VK: Hello. I’m Victoria K. Welcome to another episode of Anchored by Truth. Today we are concluding 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. Next time we will begin a new series we call “But what about?” which will explore various topics found in the Bible that people sometimes find puzzling. For instance we are planning on doing one or two episodes on “but what about heaven and hell” and “but what about angels and demons.” But, for today, we’re going to close out this series on the intertestamental period. I’m in the studio today with RD Fierro, author and Founder Crystal Sea Books. RD, would you care to say a word of greeting and introduction?
RD: Greetings to all the Anchored by Truth listeners. We really appreciate you taking some time to be with us for this episode. We know that anyone who takes the time to listen to Anchored by Truth only does so because they have a sincere interest in knowing the Bible better because the single focus of Anchored by Truth is to demonstrate, as our opening says, that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. That truth used to be commonly accepted but it’s not today. So, to hold to that truth requires both commitment and courage.
VK: RD, throughout this series we’ve been talking about the intertestamental period. And I think we’ve seen that even though no new books of the Bible were being produced during this period that this was a key period in Biblical history. Can you give us an overview of why you thought it was so important for us to take an in-depth look at this period?
RD: Sure. The short answer is that the intertestamental period was the period in which a number of Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled. If we don’t know anything about the intertestamental period’s history, we will miss important instances of prophetic fulfillment. Also, during the intertestamental period changes occurred in and around Israel that affected the world in which Jesus lived His earthly life. If we don’t understand those changes we miss important events that prepared the world for the arrival of the Messiah. So, to close out our series I want to emphasize those points by thinking about two hypothetical scribes – one scribe who lived at the very beginning of the intertestamental period and one scribe who lived at its end. Let’s call our first scribe, Ariel and our second scribe Zedekiah.
VK: We think of a “scribe” as someone who is a writer or a stenographer but you’re using the term as it was used in the Bible. A scribe was someone who was an expert in the Jewish scriptures and law.
RD: Right. So, let’s say Ariel was a scribe who lived in Jerusalem around 425 B.C. I want to think about the world in which Ariel lived and, more importantly, what Ariel knew about the progress of the plan of redemption.
VK: Well, first, Ariel knew that there was a plan of redemption because the plan had been launched in Genesis, the first book of the Jewish scriptures which we now call the Old Testament. And, at the time Ariel lived all of the books of the Old Testament had been written though scholars differ on when the first compilation was actually made. But in Ariel’s day the final books of the Old Testament, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi, had just been completed. So, at least all the books would have been available in one form or another.
RD: Yes. The books had all been written though as you say the first complete compilation into a single volume as we know the Old Testament would not have been available. For instance, in the Jewish scriptures the books we call Ezra and Nehemiah were generally thought to have been a single book and even in the various compilations that were produced the order of the books sometimes varied. But the main point is that Ariel has access to the entire Old Testament. As such, and since Ariel is an expert on those books, Ariel would have known that a large number of the Old Testament prophecies had been fulfilled.
VK: Such as the prophecy contained in Isaiah 44:28 where God told Isaiah “When I say of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd,’ he will certainly do as I say. He will command, ‘Rebuild Jerusalem’; he will say, ‘Restore the Temple.’” Ariel lived at a time when he had seen, or more probably his grandparents had seen, the Persian Emperor, Cyrus, conquer the Babylonian Empire. Very shortly after he did so Cyrus issued a decree that allowed the Jews in exile in Babylon to return home and to begin rebuilding their temple.
RD: Right. Ariel, his parents and his grandparents, had seen a number of Old Testament prophecies fulfilled during their lifetimes. They had seen that, even though the Babylonians did not initially destroy Jerusalem, they finally did as prophesied by Ezekiel. They had seen that the Babylonian exile had lasted about 70 years as prophesied by Jeremiah. They saw the Babylonian Empire fall to a confederation of the Medes and Persians as prophesied by Daniel. And they had seen Babylon fall in the exact way Isaiah had foretold. In Isaiah 44:27 God has said, “When I speak to the rivers and say, ‘Dry up!’ they will be dry.” The way the Medes and Persians bypassed Babylon’s impregnable walls was by diverting the Euphrates River that flowed under the wall. Then, when the river bed was dry they just marched under the wall into the city.
VK: And our fictional scribe, Ariel, now lived in a mostly rebuilt Jerusalem. The temple had been finished around 515 B.C. but the walls of Jerusalem weren’t finished until 445 B.C. So, Ariel lived in a walled city although it wasn’t nearly as grand as the pre-exile city had been. And Ariel lives in a city that is part of the Persian Empire. Israel is not an independent nation although they are enjoying some degree of autonomy in their daily lives and religious practices.
RD: Right. So, Ariel has seen a number of prophecies contained in his scriptures come true. But Ariel also knows that there are a large number of prophecies he can read about that haven’t come true. The prophet Daniel has prophesied that the Persian Empire will be conquered by the Greeks, but in Ariel’s lifetime the Persian Empire is at the height of its power. Greece is just a disjoined group of warring city states that aren’t a single country much less a threat to the mighty Persian Empire. And, as Ariel looks out over his city from the temple mount, the biggest prophecy of all – that a Messiah would come to deliver His people – remains completely unfulfilled.
VK: And maybe worse for Ariel he has the prophecy from chapter 9 of Daniel to deal with. That prophecy said that 483 years had to elapse from the date a decree was given to rebuild Jerusalem and restore its moat and city square before the Messiah, the Chosen One, would arrive. And to compound this dilemma there were four separate decrees issued by Persian emperors that had to do with rebuilding either the temple or the city. So, Ariel can’t really even be sure which decree is the one that starts the 483 year time clock ticking.
RD: Correct. But, Ariel has seen a number of very specific prophecies fulfilled so Ariel has good reason to believe that the other prophecies he knows about will also come true. But Ariel has no idea that the most recent books he has seen added to his scriptures, Ezra-Nehemiah and Malachi, are going to be the last of God’s special revelation for a very long time.
VK: A period of over 400 years. That’s almost 200 years longer than the United States has been in existence. Hopefully, Ariel has a comfortable life because neither his children, grandchildren, nor great grandchildren are going to see the prophetic fulfillment of many prophecies which are very important to them.
RD: So, now let’s leap forward to Zedekiah, our hypothetical scribe who lives at the very end of the intertestamental period. Like Ariel, let’s say Zedekiah lives in Jerusalem and he lives at the time that John the Baptist has just appeared on the scene. John the Baptist has just started his pubic ministry and is just starting to create a buzz among the common people. Zedekiah isn’t a skeptic but Zedekiah, as an expert in the scriptures, feels that he has to be far more cautious before he places his trust in this strange guy who lives in the desert, wears a camel hair coat, eats locusts and honey, and is telling everyone they need to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Let’s see what Zedekiah knows that Ariel didn’t.
VK: Well, Zedekiah now knows that just about every prophecy in the book of Daniel has been fulfilled with a staggering amount of precision. Unlike Ariel, Zedekiah has seen the Persian Empire fall to the Greek Empire. And Zedekiah knows that that conquest occurred within a remarkably short time period – just over a decade. Zedekiah also knows that there was only one great king of the Greek Empire, Alexander the Great. Zedekiah knows that the prophecy that said Alexander’s empire would be split into four parts has come true. And Zedekiah also knows that the Greek Empire has been replaced by the Roman Empire. So, Zedekiah can see the series of four world empires prophesied by Daniel in chapters 2, 7, and 8 of his book has all been fulfilled.
RD: And Zedekiah has seen that the prophecies in Daniel chapter 9 through 12 have been partially fulfilled. Zedekiah has seen that the struggle between the king of the north and the king of the south described so clearly in chapters 11 and 12 has unfolded just as prophesied in the conflicts between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. So, Zedekiah can see that a great many more prophesies contained in the Old Testament have been fulfilled between Ariel’s time and his time.
VK: And this was one of the big reasons we undertook this examination of the intertestamental period. If we don’t know anything about the intertestamental period we miss seeing an amazing number of prophetic fulfillments.
RD: Right. But, like Ariel, Zedekiah has not seen any of the prophecies related to the coming of the Messiah being fulfilled. Like Ariel, Zedekiah is still awaiting the promised Anointed One who will deliver his people. But unlike Ariel Zedekiah can see that the prophesied 483 time period between the delivery of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the arrival of the Messiah has largely elapsed. Zedekiah knows that it has been more than 400 years since Darius and Artaxerxes issued their decrees concerning Jerusalem. So, Zedekiah could have good reason to believe that the arrival of the Messiah might be very close at hand.
VK: Just as Nicodemus seems to have. Nicodemus said plainly to Jesus that they, the Jewish leaders, knew Jesus had come from God because of the miracles Jesus had done. The perceptive Jews of Nicodemus’ day knew all that our hypothetical Zedekiah did. And, when the Jewish leaders saw John the Baptist begin his ministry apparently many of those leaders wondered exactly that. In the first chapter of his gospel John says that the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites out to ask him whether he was the Messiah. John of course said that he wasn’t. But he did say that he was the Elijah-type messenger that Malachi prophesied would arrive just before the Messiah.
RD: Right. So, Ariel and Zedekiah both stood at crucial intersections of history. Ariel stood at the intersection where a 1,000 year period of God’s special revelation came to a close and period of revelatory silence was about to begin. In Ariel’s day it had been a little over a thousand years since Moses had first assembled or written the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible. And the 400 to 450 year period of the intertestamental period was about to begin. Zedekiah stood at the end of that period and where a new period of special revelation was about to begin. It would begin first with John the Baptist breaking the period of revelatory silence. John obviously was receiving communication directly from God because he told his followers he was able to identify Jesus as the Messiah because of the sign he had been given that the Spirit would come down and rest on Him.
VK: But John the Baptist wasn’t the only one that God was communicating with directly in that day. John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, had a visit from Gabriel. Gabriel told Zechariah of the coming birth of John the Baptist. And there were two elderly people, Anna and Simeon, who received messages from God about Jesus and recognized Jesus as the Messiah when he was a baby.
RD: Correct, but Anna and Simeon’s messages from God were more for the purpose of authentication than proclamation. And Zechariah’s message was more for preparation. It was John the Baptist who came forth in the mold of the Old Testament prophets and really broke that extended period of prophetic silence. What I want us to see is that the intertestamental period created those prophetic intersections. The opening of the intertestamental period inaugurated a period of prophetic silence, the close marked the end. What I think is useful for us today is to examine what the people who lived at those intersections knew and how what they knew affected their faith. In part, I think this is useful because it is fair to say that we live in another period of prophetic silence.
VK: What you mean is that the canon of scripture closed almost 2,000 years ago, right? It’s not that we don’t have a special revelation from God. We do. It’s called the Bible. But the period we live in resembles the intertestamental period because new special revelations are not being added currently. Do I have that correct?
RD: Exactly. In fact, it’s been almost 2,000 years since the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, was written. So, this period of revelatory silence has gone on 4 to 5 times longer than the intertestamental period. But during this period we have seen additional prophecies fulfilled. Some of these were prophecies contained in the Old Testament but some were provided in the New Testament.
VK: Such as?
RD: Such as Jesus prophesying about the fall and destruction of Jerusalem.
VK: You’re thinking of Mark, chapter 13, verses 1 and 2. “As Jesus was leaving the Temple that day, one of his disciples said, “Teacher, look at these magnificent buildings! Look at the impressive stones in the walls.” Jesus replied, “Yes, look at these great buildings. But they will be completely demolished. Not one stone will be left on top of another!”
RD: Yes. Jerusalem was completely destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Roman general, Titus, who later became emperor. But let’s get back to Ariel and Zedekiah for a moment. As we mentioned in their hypothesized settings both knew about prophecies of a coming Messiah but neither had seen His arrival. But if Zedekiah lived for a few more years after he saw John the Baptist appear on the scene Zedekiah would have seen dozens more Old Testament prophecies come true in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It’s just that Zedekiah, like most Jews of his time, would have seen the prophecies come true in an unexpected way.
VK: Faithful Jews like Zedekiah very much expected the Messiah to be a conquering political and military figure. But in His first coming Jesus came to conquer sin and death – arguably a task that’s immeasurably harder than just conquering a country or empire.
RD: Yes. So, as we stand in our own period of revelatory silence we have the advantage not just of seeing that the vast majority of Old Testament prophecies have been fulfilled, but also many from the New Testament. But like Ariel and Zedekiah there is one great prophetic hope that we have and for which we are still awaiting fulfillment.
VK: I’m sure you mean the second coming of Jesus. Believers have been looking forward to that since Jesus’ ascension and the angels asked His disciples why they kept looking at the sky. Then they added, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Ever since that minute believers have wondered when He would come again.
RD: That is the hope I’m thinking about. There are many different opinions on many matters relating to eschatology but all commentators are agreed that at some point Jesus will make a physical return to the Earth. And when He does He will usher in the time of final judgment and separation of believers from unbelievers. So, we, in our day, are different from Ariel and Zedekiah in that they were looking forward to the first coming of the Messiah. We look back to Jesus’ first coming. But we are the same as Ariel and Zedekiah in looking forward to the Messiah righting all wrongs, providing rewards to His servants, and restoring the heavens and earth to an uncorrupted state. That’s one of the reasons I think it is a good idea for contemporary believers to study previous periods of Biblical history like the intertestamental period. We can get so lost in our own time and troubles we can forget that God’s plan of redemption is still firmly on track and that He will complete it at a time that He has already chosen.
VK: So, what you’re saying is that in order for us to persevere in our faith we need to have an eternal perspective. We need to see beyond the trials and temptations that surround us day-to-day. It’s certainly not that those trials and temptations are unimportant but if we want to be victorious over them we need to remember that it is God who will provide the victory. But how can we be confident that God will provide the victory if we don’t have confidence in God’s promises. And the place where God’s promises are contained is the Bible. So, we need to ensure that we are firm in our minds that the Bible is God’s word. It’s one thing to answer yes to the question, “is the Bible the word of God?” But it’s another thing to be able to answer the follow up question of “why do you believe that?”
RD: And, oddly enough, studying the intertestamental period increases our confidence in the two testaments. And thinking about the challenges believers faced at each point in redemptive history helps us be much more secure and effective in our own place in redemptive history. Christianity is a faith rooted in time and place. It’s not a faith that asks its believers to suspend their critical facilities. To the contrary, as we discussed in a previous episode of Anchored by Truth we are commanded to love God with all our minds. A huge part of the confidence believers should have is knowing how we today fit into the unfolding of redemptive history.
VK: So, are we more like Ariel or Zedekiah?
RD: I think we’re more like Zedekiah. At our place in history we haven’t had a direct revelation from God in almost 2,000 years. Zedekiah knew God had been quiet for over 400 years but right before John the Baptist started his ministry Zedekiah had no way of knowing when God would break His silence.
VK: Oh. I think I see where you’re going with this. When God did break His silence He gave the world so much more than just another earthly political leader. God gave the world the means to transcend the sin and death that had plagued mankind since the garden. So, while Zedekiah wouldn’t know it until after the resurrection something far more amazing than just a military conquest was right around the corner.
RD: Precisely. I’m well aware there are a wide variety of views on eschatology in our day and time. Probably the dominant view in our day and time is that the next event of redemptive history is the rapture – the removal of the church before the great tribulation. But not all Biblical scholars believe there will be a rapture or a literal millennium of Christ’s reign on this earth. But all Christians agree that Christ’s physical return to the earth is an event that we can and should anticipate eagerly. And as Jesus emphasized, other than the Father, no one knows the day and time that will happen. It could be tomorrow. It could be today.
VK: So, we need to be about the business of ensuring that we are ready for Him to return. That’s not something that anyone else can do for us. We must do it for ourselves. That’s the reason regular Bible study and meditation are essential to our maturity as Christians. Other people can answer questions and point us to helpful resources but we are the only ones who can absorb it and apply what we learn to our lives.
RD: Amen. Today we used Ariel and Zedekiah as hypothetical examples of people who lived at particular times in Biblical history. But there were real people who did live at those times and places who had the same kinds of questions that we do. Zedekiah lived in an era when God’s prophetic silence was broken but it’s interesting to think about what Zedekiah might have wondered right before that happened. Did Zedekiah wonder whether God was ever going to keep His promise to send a Messiah? Did he wonder whether God’s revelation was ended for all time? His scriptures told him differently but did he believe them. Our Bible tells us Jesus is coming again. We live in an era when we’ve seen a physical nation of Israel restored to its homeland. So, we’ve seen things that some people only dreamed about for over 1,900 years, but never happened. What’s next for us? The one thing we know for sure is that Jesus is coming again. We have hundreds of fulfilled prophecies from the Bible that assure us that at some point God will interrupt the daily activities of this world in an amazing and powerful way. We too could be the people who witness that.
VK: Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer of for our kids who will soon be starting school because we certainly want God to both guide, inspire, and protect them.
---- CHILDREN STARTING SCHOOL
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(Bible Quote from the Good News Translation)
Malachi, Chapter , verses 1 and 2, Good News Translation