Introduction to the 2^nd half of the book of Daniel: Today in Daniel we have reached a dividing marker in the book from the historical narratives, the stories of the life of Daniel and his three friends, into the visions of Daniel given to him by God himself.  The rest of the book of Daniel will comprise these visions and they are markedly different from what has gone before.  YET, there are some similarities.  We will see consistency in how God gives these visions to Daniel which plays into his former experiences, some of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, etc…

The type of literature that we are now going to be reading is called apocalyptic.[1]  Apocalyptic literature is the type of literature of the book of Revelation. It is no secret that there are many themes in the book of Revelation that are similar to Daniel.  Daniel has rightly been called the Old Testament Revelation.  Apocalyptic literature presents the ending of the present age of conflict replacing it with an age of unparalleled peace.  It presents a violent end to our present human history with a coronation of God’s kingdom in conquering reign over the former ages.  It is the end of human corruption and the victory of God.  It also presents a sad, sad fact.  The fact of human rebellion against God.  It just won’t stop.  We sinful humans are going to rebel against God until the bitter end, all the way to the finish line, but we are not going to win. God is going to win decisively.  And, in this, we humans who have submitted to the rule of God through Jesus have nothing to fear.  We will be protected.  God protects his people.  Although human evil is concentrated increasingly in arrogant government, God will eventually win and wipe them out.

Apocalyptic literature is different from straight forward non-fiction writing.  History, a non-fiction story about the past, is usually rather straightforward.  The visions from Daniel 7-12 are not.  They are given in symbolic form.  That is to say, they represent real things, real people and real events, but they are given in symbol in order to concentrate on what the things really are rather than what they appear to be from the outside. This is a metaphor rich genre and it teaches us by analogy, it reveals while preserving mystery.  We immediately recognize we are reading apocalyptic literature through the following example:

“The sun will not shine and the moon will turn to blood and the stars will fall from the sky and the rest of the county will be partly cloudy.”  (Duguid-Reformed Expository Commentary) Do you see the sentence that did not fit? Of course you did.  You picked it out immediately.  Apocalyptic literature is large-scale world ending, universe shaking, cosmos interrupting events, not just predictions about the local weather.  So, take a deep breath, here we go.  We are now going to dive into this type of literature in scripture to see what our Lord God will show us through the visions that he gave to Daniel 2,500 years ago.

1)     Apocalyptic visions are symbols that get to the heart of the matter instead of the outer, physical appearances of things.

 2)     Apocalyptic visions in scripture, (Daniel, Revelation) are always about the end of the present physical age and the conquering victory of God in saving his people.

(v. 1) Earlier, during the first year of King Belshazzar’s reign in Babylon, Daniel had a dream and saw visions as he lay in his bed. He wrote down the dream, and this is what he saw.

By Daniel 6, we saw Daniel as a truly aged man, in his mid-eighties.  But here, we return to a slightly former state. This would have been about 552 BC.  Daniel at this time would have been about 70 years old.  The first thing I see about this is that God continues to reveal things to us throughout our lives.  We don’t just get all the good stuff when we are young. God continues to use and speak through Daniel all through his life, even giving him deep and complex dreams and visions, as we shall see, up through his eighties.  Sometimes the good stuff is reserved for those who grow in wisdom as they grow older.

We learn the context of this dream.  Daniel laying in bed is a reference to nighttime and to his sleep.  He was sleeping and God gave him something directly through his dreams. This is not your normal or average dream. This is a dream or a vision that means something important.  We also learn that Daniel writes down the dream.  Here we switch from the 3^rd person story telling about Daniel into the 1^st person accounts directly from Daniel’s thoughts.  This is his own journal, as it were. He wrote this dream down. In doing so, he was writing scripture. This is not a compilation or a combination over the generations of scribal additions and editorial combinations. This is one man’s experience through the Holy Spirit who revealed the future to him and it was written down for our edification.  This is holy scripture.  He wrote what he saw, and now we read it:

(v. 2) In my vision that night, I, Daniel, saw a great storm churning the surface of a great sea, with strong winds blowing from every direction. 3 Then four huge beasts came up out of the water, each different from the others.

Great storm on the sea. If we do our best to return to the context of the original audience, the ancient middle eastern people who would have read this and to Daniel himself, the image of a great storm on the great sea is a virtual picture of unrest and horror in the very world itself.  (Many near eastern myths concentrate on the sea as chaos) and the Old Testament does at times use this same imagery.  However, the sea itself is directly pictured as the nations of the world, the goyim as they were called in Hebrew. The nations.

Isaiah 17:12-13 – 12 Listen! The armies of many nations roar like the roaring of the sea. Hear the thunder of the mighty forces as they rush forward like thundering waves. 13 But though they thunder like breakers on a beach, God will silence them, and they will run away. 

 Additionally, at the very end of time, we also read of monstrous beast arising “out of the sea” which probably pictures the gentile nations: Revelation 13:1 -1 Then I saw a beast rising up out of the sea. It had seven heads and ten horns, with ten crowns on its horns. And written on each head were names that blasphemed God.

 **Picture of the four beasts coming up

 Next, we see everything is being churned up by the four winds, which is a reference to the entire earth.  The phrase is often used, the “four winds of heaven” or the “four corners of the earth.” These are very ancient metaphors with their roots deep in middle eastern imagery.  This is symbolic of the entire earth.  Something is going on which regards all peoples and all the earth.

The four beasts of Daniel 7

Ok, why BEASTS?  Well, it’s easier. It preserves the mystery, but animals have always been the symbol of national power.  We Americans have an Eagle as our national symbol.  If “this means that” it is easier to do this than to show Daniel a picture of the man himself who would have ruled that nation, especially when the nation or empire went through more than one ruler. If you think about it, apart from being more in tune with how ancient people would have received symbols, it was also a pretty ingenious way to do things.  More spiritually to the point, we are now going to encounter a change in symbol from earlier in the book.  Back in Daniel chapter two, we read about the coming kingdoms of the earth like they were a great statue of a person, a great metal image.  Now, we are going to see these same kingdoms more from a purely spiritual point of view, in which they are portrayed as beasts.  Wild beasts that are amalgams or mutants, pieces put together mostly from known animals, but horrific, wild, terrible and nasty.  Except for the second kingdom, the bear, they are all a mix mash of different animal pieces unnaturally put together. They aren’t even just regular animals. They are mutants.  This is how God thinks of human kingdoms that arrogantly exalt themselves.  They are like a nightmarish combination of parts. We will speak more of this later today.

(v. 4) The first beast was like a lion with eagles’ wings. As I watched, its wings were pulled off, and it was left standing with its two hind feet on the ground, like a human being. And it was given a human mind.

Most scholars agree that this kingdom, made of a lion and an eagle represents the kingdom of Babylon.  In Jeremiah 49:19-22, Nebuchadnezzar and the forces under him are compared to both a lion and an eagle. It was almost at its end when this vision was given to Daniel. It had only about ten years left.  The emphasis upon its wings being torn off may be a reference to its soon defeat, but it is also surely a reference to what happened to Nebuchadnezzar later on in his life when he went insane and then was humbled and was saved. This is the only kingdom that has any sort of positive connotation on it, which only strengthens our belief that Nebuchadnezzar was truly saved. In this dream, to be given a human “Mind” is a very good thing.  (Later, the Antichrist will have what seem to be human eyes and a mouth, but this is different.  A human mind will connect Nebuchadnezzar to the human Son of Man later on, not to the Antichrist.)

This image also conforms to the dream Nebuchadnezzar had in Daniel 2, where he was represented as the first kingdom, the head of gold.  So here, his kingdom is first in that it was contemporary when Daniel had the dream.

 3)     The first beast, the Lion with eagles wings, is the Babylonian empire.

(v. 5) Then I saw a second beast, and it looked like a bear. It was rearing up on one side, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. And I heard a voice saying to it, “Get up! Devour the flesh of many people!”

Extent of the Persian Empire

This is the only kingdom that is not an amalgam of different animal parts and that is strange because most scholars believe it represents the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians, which was an amalgam of two people groups.  I am not arguing with the consensus, just pointing out an anomaly.  However, this voracious bear is raised up on one side, probably to represent the Persian dominance which came to characterize the empire the more powerful it became. It has three ribs in its mouth and this could represent Babylon, Lydia and Egypt, the three main areas it conquered, but we cannot be sure. Even though our versions of bears are now a little tame because of the image of a bear in our cartoon culture, in the ancient world, a bear was a forest predator not to be messed with. Syrian bears only died out in certain portions of the middle east as lately as about 100 years ago and they grew to up to about 550 pounds which is slightly less than a grizzly.  Additionally, the command to devour much flesh could be a reference to the fact that this kingdom was larger even than the Babylonian empire and was the single largest world empire up to this point in time.

 -This is the chest and ARMS-(2 parts) of silver in Daniel 2.  The silver Arms corresponding to two different empires combined into one piece.

4)     The second beast, the bear, is the Medo-Persian empire.

 (v. 6) Then the third of these strange beasts appeared, and it looked like a leopard. It had four bird’s

wings on its back, and it had four heads. Great authority was given to this beast.

 Many scholars believe this to be none other than the Greek empire headed by Alexander the Great.  We will cover this in greater detail when we move to chapter 8, but for now it is sufficient to mention that a leopard was considered the quickest predator in that area of the world.  Now, add to this four wings, which in ancient times was an indicator of speed, (see the wings on the feet and helmet of Hermes) and the standout element of this animal is speed and quickness to the kill.  This was indicative of Alexander’s great conquests.  His empire grew larger than even the Persian empire as he made it from Macedonia in Greece all the way into India itself.  However, the four heads probably symbolize that he was killed at only 32 and the empire was divided into four parts and given to four of his generals. Thus, the four heads.  The great authority was probably to signify the actual authority that Alexander possessed during his life, being one of the few people in world history to control that much of the land mass AND populace under one name.

-This is the torso of bronze according to the dream of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter 2.

5)     The third beast, the leopard with four wings and four heads, is the Greek empire.

(v. 7) Then in my vision that night, I saw a fourth beast—terrifying, dreadful, and very strong. It devoured and crushed its victims with huge iron teeth and trampled their remains beneath its feet. It was different from any of the other beasts, and it had ten horns.

First, a marker of importance is introduced.  “Then in my vision that night” which lets us know, as it does later in verse 13, that something more important is coming.  So, this beast is important. This beast cannot even be described by either pointing to a human animal or by the combination of known animal body parts.  It is simply described by the feelings it causes Daniel to have.  Terrifying, Dreadful.  Look at the combination of words from this verse all strung together: Beast – terrifying, dreadful, strong, devoured, crushed victims, huge iron teeth, trampled remains, ten horns.

Now, something that often happens in prophecy, is that something very close to the receiver’s (Daniel) time is described and then God talks about something VERY far off. The concept is called prophetic fore-shortening.  It’s like all these things coming right around the corner are described and then something VERY far away, but that is STILL RELEVANT to the discussion, the end of the process, is described.  I wish I had more time to deal with it now, but it really does happen a fair amount in the Old Testament.  So, although I do believe that this “monster” is somehow describing the Roman empire that conquered the Greek empire, I believe God is mix-mashing future kingdoms into a gross monstrosity that is arising as a future kingdom, with “10 horns” many horns, so symbolize many different branches or many different rulers and that eventually, something else will come of all this. It is described as different from the other beasts because it really is different, for out of this kingdom, the anti-Christ is going to arise. Now, this is when prophecy buffs start to come out of the woodwork and think about every possible combination of the ancient Roman empire and how that transitioned into the European union and where America fits in and all that stuff. And to that I say, “WHOA!!”  I don’t even think that is what is being communicated by this passage, perhaps other biblical passages make that connection, but I think the basic thrust of this one is that there is coming a future “monster” of a kingdom that is a gross monstrosity and

In ancient Israel, horns symbolized strength

indescribable compared to the kingdoms that have gone before it.  Indeed, in the book of Revelation, the beast that arises to challenge the Lord at the end of time has elements of all the kingdoms that have gone before it, the very ones described in Daniel.  Remember that in biblical imagery, a horn symbolizes strength, authority and honor.  Look with me at that passage:

Revelation 13:1-2 –  1 Then I saw a beast rising up out of the sea. It had seven heads and ten horns, with ten crowns on its horns. And written on each head were names that blasphemed God. 2 This beast looked like a leopard, but it had the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion! And the dragon gave the beast his own power and throne and great authority.

Do you see the elements of the animals we have already talked about incorporated into this beast? Of course you do.  So, I think in Daniel, the description of this beast is not even so much to describe the Roman empire as to prophetically foreshorten the last kingdom that will be on display when Jesus Christ comes again to judge the earth.  And from the book of Revelation, we know that kingdom will truly be a BEAST of a kingdom, arrogantly rising to fight against God himself.  That is why this beast in Daniel has more focus on the antichrist, and much, much less on the Roman aspect of things than most prophecy people give credence to.

One thing that is important to note here also is that although many people think we are on a road of progress because of technology and innovation and globalization, in fact, the opposite is true.  Technology is great, but usually, the great things we invent as humans are put to more evil purposes. We warp and mutate everything for power and control.  In this vision, the kingdoms of the earth culminate in this awful beast, which is worse than anything that has come before it.  This is regress, not progress.

Lastly, I want to point out that the human kingdoms of this earth are represented by beasts, but there is an organization that looks different from this. In the New Testament, Paul calls the church the body of the Lord.  We are part of something that looks much different. Jesus told his disciples that he is the vine and we are the branches.  We are part of a living organism in Christ.  Unfortunately, people on this earth are either associated with one or the other, you cannot have it both ways.  Now, in setting up this distinction between the church and human government, I do not mean to say that the church here on the earth looks spotless or in distinction from human kingdoms is run perfectly.  Indeed, those of us who have been Christians for some time can attest that a lot of mess happens in the church.  But, it is as Martin Luther once said of the church, “The human church is a lot like the way it must have been in Noah’s Ark.  It was very smelly in there at times, but it was a lot better to be in there than outside.”

Along with that, I must say that in distinction from the human systems of government, leaders in the church must not be territorial by nature with those that also name the name of Jesus.  We serve a different leader than a human master who accumulates power for himself. Therefore, the leaders of the church must constantly be in it for our master Jesus and not for an earthly kingdom or piece of the pie. We are all slaves of Jesus Christ, not masters of our own domain.  Any pastor who jealously territorializes against other, truly Christian churches is both petty and blinded to his own role in the kingdom.  (This is not said about protecting the sheep from wolves or false movements. This is said in regard to the brotherhood that exists among ALL churches who belong to Christ.)

(v. 8) As I was looking at the horns, suddenly another small horn appeared among them. Three of the first horns were torn out by the roots to make room for it. This little horn had eyes like human eyes and a mouth that was boasting arrogantly.

 As Daniel was watching these numerous horns (presumably on the head of the beast) another horn “sprouted” up.  It was so ambitious that it took up room that three others had made for themselves.  This is a sign of this little horns ambition and quest for power.  In saying that the little horn eyes “like” human eyes and a mouth that was boasting the meaning is given that he has greater ambition “seeing” what a beast cannot, or that he understands more than just the other beasts. This could be a reference to the Satanic inspiration of this leader, this little horn.  In line with this is the mouth that is boasting arrogantly, which is indicative of Satan himself, whose pride got him kicked out of the heavenly court.  We will spend more of next week talking about the Antichrist, so I am not going to spend any more real-time on him now.

6)     The fourth beast, the monster with ten horns and a little horn, is the accumulation of human kingdoms that will eventually produce the Antichrist.  This is sometimes pictured as the Roman empire, but don’t focus too much on that. 

Francois Felenon was a Catholic Archbishop in the late 1600′s. He was a reforming leader in the Catholic church and didn’t always have a great relationship with other Catholic leaders. His writings sometimes brought him into trouble with the current Pope or the Inquisition.  However, he was a faithful Catholic throughout his life and did much on behalf of that church.  Because of that, I can’t recommend everything he wrote, especially as a Protestant pastor. But, he clearly knew Christ as Lord, and one little book of his that both my wife and I (and many Protestants over the years) have gleaned much from lately is titled, “LET GO.”     I want to quote at length something that he wrote almost 400 years ago in this little book:

“Even now my soul is suffering, but I am aware that it is the life of self which causes us pain; that which is dead does not suffer. If we were really dead, and our life hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3), we would no longer struggle with those pains in spirit that now afflict us….But when you receive your cross unwillingly, you will find it doubly severe.  The resistance within is harder to bear than the cross itself! But if you recognize the hand of God, and make no opposition to His will, you will have peace in the midst of affliction.  Happy indeed are they who can bear their sufferings with this simple peace and perfect submission to the will of God! Nothing so shortens and soothes suffering as this spirit of non-resistance….Because the stubborn clinging to life which makes the cross necessary in the first place, also tends us to reject that cross-at least in part. so we have to go over the same ground again and again. We end up suffering greatly, but to very little purpose. May the Lord deliver us from falling into that state of soul in which crosses are of no benefit to us.” -Francois Felenon, LET GO, letter 2.

Sometimes bearing our cross means being able to “let go” of whatever we thought should be happening in our particular situation and taking up what God seems to want for us here and now.  When we hold on to our own desires for our circumstances, we resist God himself.  When we “let go” we are released to bear the cross each day, walking behind our beautiful savior, Jesus, becoming his disciples.

the writing on the wall

Daniel 5 presents a pretty crazy judgment by God on a guy who just wanted to do what he wanted to do. It was such a famous passage that it elicited a painting by no less than Rembrandt himself.

One of the more interesting facts about the passage is that the main character in the passage, king Belshazzar, was unknown to secular history until fairly recently.  In fact, Daniel chapter 5 was often ridiculed by secular historians because they were convinced that Daniel was such a storyteller that he even invented a character.  Even as recently as the late 1800′s, King Belshazzar was unknown in the extant records.  However, archaeology turned up some amazing finds in the decades to come.  It turns out that after King Nebuchadnezzar died, there was some political instability in the Babylonian empire. A series of kings ruled until we get to King Nabonidus, about 20 years after Nebuchadnezzar.  However, King Nabonidus was a pretty fervent worshiper of a certain Babylonian god, Sin, the moon god.  He was so fervent in his devotion that it appears to have made the ruling Chaldean class in Babylon upset and uneasy about him.  A political solution was arranged when he agreed to allow his oldest son, Belshazzar to rule alongside him as co-regent, while he “retired” to another area of his kingdom.  From that point on, Belshazzar ruled from Babylon effectively as king.   Daniel not only proved to be right about this story, but one of the details in the chapter gives a historical detail of great accuracy when he has the king Belshazzar say, “whoever interprets the dream I will make the THIRD ruler in the kingdom.”  This is significant because he himself was only the 2nd in command, under his father.  This not only proves that Daniel knew his history, but that the detail was probably

A timeline of Babylonian kings during Daniel's lifetime.

provided by an eyewitness to the events themselves.

Secular historians often laugh at the details of the Bible for a time, and then more evidence is unearthed and the Bible again proves its historical value and truth filled message.

First, there is a lot of debate about the year in which Daniel was written, but I will save that debate for future blog as I teach through the book.

Surprisingly, there is a TON of archeological information that is relevant to the book of Daniel, because the city of Babylon has some ruins that have been investigated and can be seen today. One of them is the famous Ishtar Gate, one of the gates that lead into the inner, fortified city of Babylon.  It was through this gate that Daniel would have probably come many times during his life.

One of the main characters of the book of Daniel is the figure of Nebuchadnezzar.  He was an ancient king that exerted tremendous power and was a dominating individual.  In the year 605 BC or thereabouts, God used Nebuchadnezzar to attack and conquer the entire Middle-East.

A coin found bearing the image of Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar himself is a well-known historical figure.  Technically he is Nebuchadnezzar II and exists as the preeminent king of the Babylonian dynasty, which was brief, albeit very powerful during his day.  At its height, it controlled virtually the entire middle eastern region.

He began this particular conquest at the head of his father Nabopolassar’s, army.  Nabopolassar was a Chaldean prince who rebelled against the Assyrian army with the help of some allies.  He eventually secured his own kingdom centered in Babylon.  After he consolidated power, he reigned in Babylon for 20 years.  After some time, Nebuchadnezzar, his son, was sent out to crush the Syrian opposition and move down to Egypt where Egypt was trying to fill the void left by the recent fall of the Assyrian empire.  Nebuchadnezzar did just that.  He conquered Egypt overwhelmingly in battle, but soon after the battle received word

Territory conquered by the Babylonians.

that his father had died and so he returned to Babylon with a small contingent of warriors. It was during series of conquests that he conquered the Judean realm.

Daniel 1:2 mentions how Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and carried off the sacred items used in the Hebrew’s temple worship.  This was a common thing to do in the ancient middle-east, but it would have been strange for an

Israelite to read this because what it signified back then was that the gods of whoever won were stronger than the gods of whoever they conquered.  So, to an ancient reader, this would seem like Nebuchadnezzar was the stronger person and Babylon was the stronger land. The text tells us that it was God that gave Judah into Nebuchadnezzar’s hand.  In Israel, nothing was more sacred than the objects used to worship the Lord in the very temple itself. No one was allowed to touch them except the Levites and the priests themselves.  Incense burners, menorahs, cups, plates and other instruments.  These things were used in the very worship of Yahweh himself.  They never left the temple area.  They were the epitome of what was holy.  And now, they are going to reside in a pagan temple, a temple where people bowed down and worshiped idols.

So, now the story will shift to the land of Babylon.  Babylon itself later became somewhat of a by word among religious people of many faiths in that it signified the “WORLD” and it’s systems. This is directly the result of how the Jews were deported in this story to the land of Babylon.  It signified their defeat at the hands of the world and their longing to return home to their own promised land. Babylon itself however at this time was the very height of education, military might, engineering and prestige. By this time the Babylonians had measure the hour into sixty minutes, they had measured the circle into 360 degrees.

The City of Babylon

The city itself is near the Persian Gulf and lies about 30 miles outside of the modern city of Baghdad. It lay right next to

A stylized rendering of how magnificent Babylon must have seemed back then.

the Euphrates river and indeed there were sections of the city on both sides of the river.  Nebuchadnezzar greatly fortified the city, erecting larger city walls on both sides of the river so that it could not be attacked. There was an inner fortified city which was about 500 acres in all in which lay their most sacred temple and the king’s palace.  Outside of this was the regular city, which was still strongly fortified and was about 3,000 acres total.  The outer wall of this city was so large that a four house chariot could ride on the top with room. The city itself was laid out in a square so that the streets intersected each other in ninety degree angles.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

This was also the place where Nebuchadnezzar built the famous hanging gardens of Babylon, which were considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. He built them for one of his wives who was homesick for her native land.  During this period, Babylon was probably the most impressive city in the entire ancient world.  

One of the things that surprises people about Daniel is the journey he had to take even to reach Babylon as a captive.  Since the actual mileage is not listed in scripture, we are dependent on historical records of the routes that people traveled on back then.  In being transported as a refugee from Jerusalem to Babylon, the Babylonian army would have

Daniel's route to Babylon

traveled through the well-known trade routes of the middle east, moving north through Judea before crossing over and moving down along the routes of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  This is only one piece of the story that suggests what great trials Daniel went through in his life of service to God. We are sometimes tempted to believe that the characters in scripture had epic moments of faith, without realizing what trials and struggles they also must have had to go through.  Thinking through the life situation and possible trials of the heroes of our faith makes their stands of faith and ministry more incredible as we learn more about the things that actually happened to them. In Daniel’s case, he was forced to make this 500 mile journey after having experienced the siege and destruction of all those things he held dearest.  He may have lost family members in the war against Nebuchadnezzar’s army.  His faith surely took a hit when it was learned that Nebuchadnezzar had raided the very temple itself.  In addition to this, the word used to describe Daniel and his friends in Daniel chapter one is the Hebrew word yeled, which is the word for “young man” usually denoting a male between the ages of 15-20.  So Daniel was probably only 16-17 when these events took place.  It is an incredible beginning to a remarkable life of faith and dependence of the Lord.

Nazareth itself was a village of somewhere between 400-800 people, no bigger.

As the day begins:

-She gets up in the cold.

-She helps her mom or dad begin the fire.

-She begins her day.  (she doesn’t brush her teeth.)

-She begins helping her mother prepare a small meal for the men who will go out to work.

-Once they eat and leave, she begins her daily projects.

-She milks the family goats and takes the milk inside to the small kitchen area where her mother takes it from her and they begin to make it into cheese and give a little milk to her youngest brother.

-She helps her mother with the younger children.

-She begins drying fruit or baking bread, kneading the dough and then walking it to one of the open village ovens nearer the center of the village. While she waits for it to bake, she gets to talk to one of her friends, another girl in the village, as they both watch their young siblings.

-She brings the bread back to her home, wrapped in clothes.

-She starts the daily mending of the men’s clothes.  After this she sits down at a family loom and helps her mother weave.

-She prepares food to take to the men in the fields who are harvesting grapes or grain or olives.

-She takes the food to her father and her brothers and they sit and talk while she waits on them for 20 to 30 minutes.

-She lugs back all the leftovers, water and anything else they needed to bring to the house.

-She puts all those things away, ready for the next time they will be needed.

-As the little children take a mid day nap after lunch, she is allowed to sit and rest, or walk out to overlook the valley and perhaps spend another fifteen minutes with her friend again.

-She moves back to begin helping her mother with the preparations for her cousin’s wedding, a village feast or perhaps making something useful for the home.

-She begins the preparations for the nightly meal and the men coming home from the fields.

-She goes to the village well to draw water for the entire family for the entire evening.  Her two younger sisters come with her and it takes them a half an hour to complete because other women and children are there.  But they don’t mind because this is when she can catch up with what has gone on in her village of about five hundred people during the day.  Then they carry the heavy stone pots back to their home.

-The men arrive from the fields. If they are eating as a family, perhaps they will eat together. If family relatives are eating with them, the men sit down to eat first, where she will again wait on them for perhaps thirty minutes, and then she and the other females eat together quickly.

-the younger children are laid to bed.

-She is allowed to stay up around the fire just outside the house as her grandfather tells stories with some of the other men of the village.

-She goes in the house and takes her place in the raised corner of the room, where the entire family sleeps.  The goats also move in the house because this is the cold season of the year.  They all lay down, and they go to sleep.

-End of day.  Tomorrow, repeat.

This is the village, and this is the type of family that Jesus, the son of God was born into.  this picture of a day in the life of Mary shows us how a life of significance is not found in being rich or powerful or famous, but simply in doing the things that God has set before us and in being obedient to what he wants for our lives.  There was NOTHING significant about Mary in the world’s eyes. She was just a young girl who went about doing what the majority of women have had to do throughout world history. She believed in God and was submissive to his will for her life.  For that, the angel Gabriel calls her “Highly Favored!”

God does not see like we see.  He is not impressed by the things that impress us.  Remember that this Christmas.

And then I thought about God. How He adopted us with a solemn oath, with a covenant written in blood and with the sacrifice of his own son. How he allowed us to enter into his own family through freely giving to us a member of his real family, Jesus Christ the righteous one. That is what Christmas really is. The giving of one person, Jesus, for the adoption of many sons and daughters. Christmas is the day we remember what has been given, so that we can receive.

God gave the Israelites the system of sacrifice in order to point to something greater that was coming, the sacrifice of his own dear son. In the ancient world, anything important in the way of a promise or covenant involved the shedding of blood and the killing of an animal.  God used this in order to point to the shedding of blood that would be required for the forgiveness of our sins in Christ. Jesus came and died on a cross in order to show  us how greatly God loves us.  All the sacrifices that came before Jesus were pointing us to the great sacrifice that Jesus would perform for us.  In theological terms, this is called a “foreshadowing”, something that points toward something else in the future.  The sacrificial system was pointing toward the coming of Jesus and the once and for all sacrifice that  God was giving us in Jesus.   This is why, in John 1:29, John the Baptist can look at Jesus and say, “Look, the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world!”  John realized that Jesus was going to be a sacrifice for the sins of humanity.

The Bible does not give a direct answer to this question, but it does give us clues.  One of them is found in I Corinthians 13:9-10 “Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.”  These verses seem to indicate that when we get to heaven we will know much more than we know now.  Some great Christians have speculated that perhaps our knowledge in heaven will so closely resemble God’s view of things that we will feel as he feels.  God loves everyone who has ever lived.  He loves even those people who reject him.  That is the message of John 3:16.  However, even though God loves those people, he understands that they have freely rejected his gracious and loving offer of salvation.  Therefore, he is able to enter into loving those that have accepted him with his full love with the understanding that this is not what everyone chooses.  Because of his greatness and glory, God is not drawn into depression or anxiety over the decisions of those that reject Jesus.  Knowing that when I get to heaven I will be like Jesus comforts me and helps me remember that I will someday think, act and feel just like Jesus.  I don’t know how, but he will make heaven a place of greater knowledge for me, greater love, greater understanding and greater fellowship than anything I have experienced here on earth.

This answer does not satisfy our heartfelt feelings for those people who reject Jesus, but we must remember that we will think and feel much differently in heaven than we feel right now.   Also, as you feel hurt or sad regarding those in your life that do not know Jesus, take time to do two things.  1) Pray for them to be saved.  the prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much.  2) Share the gospel with them again. Give them another chance at coming to know the love of God in Jesus.  this type of heartfelt love and action pleases God.

“Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:19

William Borden’s life

Quotations taken from Borden of Yale, by Mrs. Howard Taylor, Moody Press, Chicago

In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. As heir to the Borden family fortune, he was already wealthy. For his high school graduation present, his parents gave 16-year-old Borden a trip around the world. As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world’s hurting people. Finally, Bill Borden wrote home about his “desire to be a missionary.”
One friend expressed disbelief that Bill was “throwing himself away as a missionary.”
In response, Borden wrote two words in the back of his Bible: “No reserves.”
Even though young Borden was wealthy, he arrived on the campus of Yale University in 1905 trying to look like just one more freshman. Very quickly, however, Borden’s classmates noticed something unusual about him and it wasn’t that he had lots of money. One of them wrote: “He came to college far ahead, spiritually, of any of us. He had already given his heart in full surrender to Christ and had really done it. We who were his classmates learned to lean on him and find in him a strength that was solid as a rock, just because of this settled purpose and consecration.”
During his college years, Bill Borden made an entry in his personal journal that defined what his classmates were seeing in him. That entry said simply: “Say ‘no’ to self and ‘yes’ to Jesus every time.”
Borden’s first disappointment at Yale came when the university president spoke in a convocation about the students’ need of “having a fixed purpose.” After that speech, Borden wrote: “He neglected to say what our purpose should be, and where we should get the ability to persevere and the strength to resist temptations.”  Surveying the Yale faculty and much of the student body, Borden lamented what he saw as the end result of an empty, humanistic philosophy: moral weakness and sin-ruined lives.
During his first semester at Yale, Borden started something that would transform campus life. One of his friends described how it began: “It was well on in the first term when Bill and I began to pray together in the morning before breakfast. I cannot say positively whose suggestion it was, but I feel sure it must have originated with Bill. We had been meeting only a short time when a third student joined us and soon after a fourth. The time was spent in prayer after a brief reading of Scripture. Bill’s handling of Scripture was helpful. . . . He would read to us from the Bible, show us something that God had promised and then proceed to claim the promise with assurance.”
Borden’s small morning prayer group gave birth to a movement that soon spread across the campus. By the end of his first year, 150 freshman were meeting weekly for Bible study and prayer. By the time Bill Borden was a senior, one thousand of Yale’s 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.
Borden made it his habit to seek out the most “incorrigible” students and try to bring them to salvation. “In his sophomore year we organized Bible study groups and divided up the class of 300 or more, each man interested taking a certain number, so that all might, if possible, be reached. The names were gone over one by one, and the question asked, ‘Who will take this person?’ When it came to someone thought to be a hard proposition, there would be an ominous pause. Nobody wanted the responsibility. Then Bill’s voice would be heard, ‘Put him down to me.’”
Borden’s outreach ministry was not confined to the Yale campus. He cared about widows and orphans and the disabled. He rescued drunks from the streets of New Haven. To try to rehabilitate them, he founded the Yale Hope Mission. One of Bill Borden’s friends wrote that he “might often be found in the lower parts of the city at night, on the street, in a cheap lodging house or some restaurant to which he had taken a poor hungry fellow to feed him, seeking to lead men to Christ.”
Borden’s missionary call narrowed to the Muslim Kansu people in China. Once he fixed his eyes on that goal, Borden never wavered. He also challenged his classmates to consider missionary service. One of them said of him: “He certainly was one of the strongest characters I have ever known, and he put backbone into the rest of us at college. There was real iron in him, and I always felt he was of the stuff martyrs were made of, and heroic missionaries of more modern times.”
Although he was a millionaire, Bill seemed to “realize always that he must be about his Father’s business, and not wasting time in the pursuit of amusement.” Although Borden refused to join a fraternity, “he did more with his classmates in his senior year than ever before.” He presided over the huge student missionary conference held at Yale and served as president of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa.
Upon graduation from Yale, Borden turned down some high-paying job offers. In his Bible, he wrote two more words: “No retreats.”
William Borden went on to do graduate work at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because he was hoping to work with Muslims, he stopped first in Egypt to study Arabic. While there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead.
When the news of William Whiting Borden’s death was cabled back to the U.S., the story was carried by nearly every American newspaper. “A wave of sorrow went round the world . . . Borden not only gave (away) his wealth, but himself, in a way so joyous and natural that it (seemed) a privilege rather than a sacrifice” wrote Mary Taylor in her introduction to his biography.
Was Borden’s untimely death a waste? Not in God’s perspective. Prior to his death, Borden had written two more words in his Bible. Underneath the words “No reserves” and “No retreats,” he had written: “No regrets.”

Portions based on material in Daily Bread, December 31, 1988, and The Yale Standard, Fall 1970 edition.