Science in Christian Perspective

 

 



 NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TESTAMENT
Allan A. McRae
President, Faith Theological Seminary
Wilmington, Delaware


From: JASA, 2, (June1950): 4-12.
I would like to read the last three verses of the first chapter of I Peter, "Being born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which lives and abides forever. For all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.. The grass withers, the flower thereof falls away; but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you."

 About twenty years ago, I attended a series of meetings about two blocks from this spot. It was an Association, but quite different from the one whose meetings I am attending now. It was announced that the purpose of the meeting was to bring together science, education, and religion and that the leaders in all three of these fields would be present in order that we could bring together the material from these fields and to give us the best of all of them. I remember that for religion they had the Fiske Jubilee Singers there, and their singing was indeed beautiful. But it was rather comical sometimes to see how what they considered the best in science and the best in religion seemed to clash. Thus they would have science represented by a man who would speak and who would tell us that Jesus Christ was born just like anyone else; He never knew anything but what He learned at school; His death had no more meaning than that of any other one who was executed, and when He died that was the end. After these men representing science gave us these which he presented as scientific facts the Fiske Jubilee Singers got up and they sang, "It's The Old-Time Religion, It's The Old-Time Religion, It's The Old-Time Religion and It's Good Enough For Me." Then I remember another speaker who told us that this old-fashioned idea of trying to save people individually was out of date. He said that we would never make a better world that way; we must go out and we must improve conditions and we must fix up social things and improve race relations and do away with war and all that, and thus we would build a great, wonderful, new world. When he got through,
the Singers came forward and they sang, "Keep A Inching Along, Keep A Inching Along,
Jesus Will Come Someday." Then a third speaker told how the old out-of-date idea
was to be talking always about the future life. We don't know whether there is any
future life, he said. All we've got is what's in this life; we must do what is the
best we can while we are here. Then when he finished, the singers rose and sang,
"I!se Got A Mansion In De Sky - I'se Got a Mansion In De Sky." And as I heard that
and saw the clash there, I realized the idea which was in the min4s of the organizer
of that conference. Here they had, they thought, science giving us these facts; here
they had education showing us these tendencies in which we should move forward into
a better world. And then, to satisfy our religious emotions, they would sing these
old-fashioned songs. And thus they put facts and they put thoughts over on this side
with their ideas which they thought they had worked out which they felt pointed the
way of progress in the world and over on the other side they put the old-fashioned
songs which they thought would represent the emotions of ideas now given up. And
that is an idea that is very common in the world - that religion is a matter of emotion of singing some beautiful words and it doesn't matter particularly what they
mean; that it is not something that has a relation to basic, substantial, solid fact.
Now, of course, it is true that knowledge alone will never save a person. You will
never save a person's soul by argument* In fact, you can't save a person's soul.
The Holy Spirit must enter into the heart, and thus convict him of sin and show him
his need of a Saviour, And that man may be utterly ignorant, he may have no back
ground., he may have no training, he may have little knowledge* But if he looks in
faith to the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour,, he can be saved and put on the road to
everlasting life and far better off than the most learned man in the world without
the knowledge of Jesus Christ. But it is a fact that education is increasing in our
country,, and it Is a splendid fact. Our country is going forward and knowledge in
improving our understanding of technical things is constantly being made better; and if the idea is accepted that religion is simply something for the backward and for the ignorant and that the person who knows doesn't believe these old-fashioned ideas, only an unexpected and sudden miracle of the Spirit of God can keep our nation from falling into utter heathenism and darkness. Let no one think that this is impossible. Other nations have been just as Christian as the United States ever was and have relapsed into heathenism, into wickedness, into idolatry. It has happened over and over again in the history of the world and it can happen here. All things are in God's hands and God controls, but God gives Christians a work to do; and the members -of the American Scientific Affiliation believe that one of the tasks which God has placed in the hands of Christian people to do an~ one of the most important tasks which they can do; not a task for every Christian to do but a task for many to do; is the task of studying the facts of science and the facts of history and seeing what the true situation is in regard to the relationship between these facts and the Bible. I do not believe that we serve the Lord by going at it and saying now here is the Bible, let me glance at it and pick three or four words out of it, this is God's. truth, now let's twist everything of science in to make it fit with it. That is not honoring to the Lord. What the Lord wants is for us to study the Bible, to get down to its exact definite statements, to see what it means in the original language and find exactly what He has taught; and He wants us to study the facts of science of geology, of history, of botany, of archaeology, or whatever it be; and He wants us to study those facts and to see how the two fit together. And if we diligently and honestly study those matters we will find that they fit together, because God who controls all things is the Author of the Word of God; and the two rightly understood must fit together, Therefore if America is to be kept from sliding into heathenism and utter wickedness and be utterly abandoned of God, if our Lord should tarry. If this is not to happen, one of the tasks facing the Christian world today is to study these matters and to show that it is reasonable to believe in the Bible; that it is not something only for the ignorant, but that It is something which the wisest man in the world can believe with a full relationship to his scientific understanding. Now, that is one of the great convictions which was in my heart, and those of the others who founded Faith Theological Seminary in 1937. And we have been trying to train men who would carry out a portion of this work there at the Seminary. And having had this con viction and this ideal with us for sometime before the founding of the American Scientific Affiliation., I was very glad of the opportunity to do what I can to help advance this work on the part of the American Scientific Affiliation. The work of showing that it is intellectually respectable to believe the Bible; that it is really the most reasonable thing we can do and. that it is unreasonable to deny the statements of the Word of God. Now this evening, I am going to look with you at a few of the facts which I have gleaned in my study of archaeology in relation to the Bible, and I am going to show you a few instances in which we see how the facts of history, the facts of archaeology, as we get them and understand them prove not to disagree with the statements of the Word of God, but to be in absolute agreement with those statements of the Word of God. About a century and a half ago, there began a movement which we call "The Higher Criticism"  a movement of denying the truth of the statements of the Scripture and working up very clever and ingenious theory as to the methods by which these books came into existence. And those theories of the "Higher Criticism" were theories which could easily be developed a century and a half ago, because very little was known about ancient times then, except what we have in the Bible. We had no other source of knowledge back of 500 B, C,, one hundred and fifty years ago* During the past hundred and fifty years, as a result of archaeology this situation has completely changed. Today, ancient history runs just as far back of 500 B6 Co as modern history comes this side of 500 B, C. You see my field of study is ancient history; the field related to the Old Testament. So I think of modern history as starting in 500 B, Co And the Ancient history goes just as far back of that; now it 17oes back to 3,000 B, Ca, as a result of archaeological discoveries, And thats as far back as it can ever go, because writing began at 3,000 B. C*, approximately. And you
can't have history before you have writings. Before that you have_____ history. You
find remains of buildings, you find some skeletons, you find some signs of where people
have lived and you make a guess as to how long people lived there. And you say, well
this must have taken 500 years and this must have taken 800 years; well that's your
guess and it's no better than the next persons guess. You cannot have exact dates
until you have writing and that is only since 3,000 B. C. If you pick up a high school
textbook of ten years ago, you are quite sure to find in it a statement like this; I
have in mind Breasted's "Ancient Times," which was very widely used as a high school
textbook a few years ago. And I remember it had this statement in it - that the year
4241 B. C. is the earliest fixed date in history because that is the date in which t1l,
 Egyptians invented their calendar. For all I know, they may still be printing that in
high school textbooks, because Breasted was one of our greatest scholars of ancient
Egyptian history and culture. But, today, there is not a scholar of Egyptian, of
any standing whatever who believers that the Egyptians had a calendar as early as
4241 B, Co I doubt if there's one who thinks they had it prior to 2700 B. C. I am
sum none think they had it before 5,000 B. C., because how could you have a calendar
without writing, If you couldn't write down your calendar it would be pretty difficult to have a calendar. That was a theory, one of the many theories that have been
advanced and dogmatically presented; that have been proven to be utterly fallacious.
But in the meantime it has been printed in high school textbooks and people have read
it and then they turned to the Bible and read in the margin that man was created in
4004 B. C., and they have said the Bible must be wrong, because 200 years before man was
created the Egyptians actually had a calendar. And thus the faith of many has been injured And the fact of the matter, of course, is that both statements are false.
Neither did the Egyptians invent their calendar in 4241 B. C., nor was man created
in 4004 B. Co; both statements are false* Ono is a false inference from the fact of
archaeology and the other false inference from the statements of the Old Testament.
Doubtless the creation of man was long prior to 4,004 B. C., as I think any careful
study of the Old Testament will demonstrate. But there is nothing in archaeology to
prove it impossible that we might have been created in 4,004 B. C., as far as archaeology is concerned, because we. have no history back of 30000 B. C., and while it is
likely that. the material remains we have to go back three or four thousand years back
of that, you cannot tell just how long material remains of that type go. And in the
Old Testament we have accounts of events running back hundreds of years back of that
time. 11fe have great-cities described in the Old Testament, cities which were absolutely unknown to us otherwise. We had great conquerors mentioned in the Old Testament
absolutely unknown to us otherwise. Whole nations were mentioned in the Old Testament
which otherwise were completely unknown. And it was simple enough for people then
simply to say, well it isn't so - I don't believe it. No one who knows the facts can
say that anymore, because at point after point, the statements of the Old Testament
have been marvelously verified by archaeological discoveries. Now this one I just referred to, the case of a whole nation is a very interesting instance. It is a nation
known as the Hittites, We have other nations, but this is the most outstanding' in
stance, perhaps. You know that the Hittites are mentioned in Genesis where Abraham
purchased a burial place for his wife from two of the sons of Seth. They are mention
ed in Exodus where God promised that He would drive them out from Palestine to make
room for the Israelites. They are mentioned along in II Samuel where we find that
David h4d a mercenary soldier in his army, Uriah the Hittite, But the most striking
reference to the Hittites is one which is much less familiar than any of these; it
is found in II Kings, the 7th Chapter and the 6th verse. And there we read in
II Kings 7:6, "for the Lord had made. the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of
chariots, and a noise of horses ' even a I noise of a great host; and they said one to
another, Lo. the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and
the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us." And it was as recently as 1904 that
ridicule was piled upon this verse* A British scholar, in a private conversation in
1904, made the statement that he did not believe that such a people as the Hittites
ever actually existed. But, he said, if it should be proven that there actually was
such a people as the Hittites, I am sure we will find that they were only a small
and a very unimportant tribe of people. And he said to speak as this verse does of
the Hittites and Egyptians in the same category is as if one were to speak of a treaty
of alliance between the British Empire and the Cherokee Indians. That's the way it
looked to this British scholar in 1904. And then just two years later, in 1906,
Professor Hugo Winckler of the University of Berlin went to____ in Asia Minor
and excavated it. And there excavating in that town in Asia-Minor,, he found there
buried under the soil, remains of the great capital of the ancient Hittites. And
there he found many acres of the foundations of palaces and temples and, best of all,
he found the archives of the Hittite empire. And in these archives he found the proof
that the Hittites were a great nation which could write on equal terms with the, Egypt
ians and the Babylonians. In fact, at one time, they actually captured and plundered
the city of Babylon. He found that the Hittites and the Egyptians fought each other
for one hundred and fifty years, back and forth, up and down through Syria and Pale's
tine., and after one hundred and fifty years of intermittent war they reached a point
where they decided that neither one of them could conquer the other. And so they decided to call it off and they made a treaty of friendship. And then after this treaty
was made the king of the Hittites went to Egypt and traveled with Pharaoh of Egypt up
and down through the land of Egypt and each of them called the other, "my brother;"
and in this treaty we have the earliest extradition clause that is known in history.
Today, instead of anybody doubting the existence of the ancient Hittites, today we
have scholars in Germany, Franco, England, and America who are giving their whole
time to the study of the language and the history and the culture of the ancient
Hittites. Recently there have been two professors of Hittite in Yale University a
lone* One of them has recently retired and I do not believe he has yet been replaced.
But, Hittite, the Hittites thus, who before 1904 were just a name in the Bible and,
otherwise seemed to have no existence, have now been proven to have been actually one
of the greatest powers in the world's history; and the memory of their glory and fame
was kept alive only by a few references in the Bible. What a wonderful illustration
of the passage with which we began this evening; "all flesh is as grass and the glory
of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower thereof falls away;
but the Word of the Lord endureth forever."

 It is interesting to go through the Bible and to find many instances of individuals, of nations, of cities, all sorts of things mentioned in the Bible and evidence of them found from archaeological discoveries. This is very interesting, but I think that even more striking is to take instances in which you have the background of the Biblical story evidenced by some archaeological discovery, showing that the Biblical story shows a knowledge which must have been from someone who was right there on the spot and know the facts as they happened, and thus giving us an evidence that the Bible was written et the time it claims to be and not as many centuries later as the higher critics maintain. I think these instances where the background was not previously familiar are among the most interesting. ltd like to call your attention to a story in the book of Genesis which is a very Pine story to tell In Sunday School so long as you tell it here in America. It's the story in Genesis 13, familiar to everyone who has ever attended Sunday Schools You'll remember in that story, it's when Abraham and Lot came up out of Egypt and they both of them were very wealthy and you remember they came up there from Egypt into Palestine and there they began to have difficulty; because each of them had so many flocks and herds. You remember that it probably went something like this: One morning, Abraham's men came out as was their custom at 5:30 in the morning and took out their flocks and their h6rds and began to take them out to find pasture and they found that all the good pasture land was taken. Lot's men had gone out at 5:00 that morning. And here all the good pasture land was taken and they had to go along over that hill country there for miles to get to good pasture land that was not already taken. And so the next day they got up at 4:30 and they got out half an hour before Lot's men and they took the good pasture land and Lot's men had to go further. And so, the next morning I suppose that Lot's men came out at 4:00 and got ahead of Abraham's men. And pretty soon they'd have been going out before they went to bed at night; and they couldn't do that and so they started fighting. And it looked as if there was going to be a real clash between them. And then Abraham went
to Lot's tent and he said we must put an and to this; and we read in verse 8 that Abraham said to Lot, "Let there be no strife between thee and me and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; we are brothers Is not the whole land before thee; separate thyself I pray thee from me. If thou wilt take the left hand then I will go to the right. Or if thou depart to the right hand then I will go to the left." And Lot lifted up his eyes and behold all the plain of Jordan that it was well-watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar." "Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordon; and Lot journeyed East; and they separated themselves the one from the other." And this story has been told over and over in Sunday Schools to show the wonderful unselfishness of Abraham and the selfishness of Lot; and it's a wonderful story to tell for that purpose in Sunday School, provided you tell it in America and not in Palestine. But the trouble is if you go to Palestine, if you go as I did in 1929 and, you stand at the place
where this happened, there between Bethel and Hai, upon that hill country of Palestine, and you stand there and you imagine Abraham and Lot walking along there and you look at this hill country where Abraham stayed, you would sea a shepherd coming along blowing on his little pipe and behind him there comes the great flocks of sheep and goats and they are following him and he's loading them out and inherits all the fine pasture land and the good springs and it's a wonderfully attractive picture; all that lovely hill country up there of Palestine, where Abraham stayed. And then you look over at the Jordan valley that Lot chose and look over and you look down there forty-five hundred feet down-to sea level, another twelve hundred feet * down to the Jorden valley, way down there, hot and dry and desolate. And in the midst of that hot, dry, desolate desert valley, there is a muddy stream winding down in the middle, And you look down at that barren section down there and you think what a fool Lot was to choose that; why on earth did he ever go down there. And the story just doesn't seem to fit, it doesn't seem to make any sense at all when you road it over there in Palestine today. And according to the higher critics, this story -gas written centuries after the time of Abraham and at that time a person standing there would have seen exactly what you see there today. And w ho would think what on earth did Lot ever choose that territory for, to go down there. But yon notice that it says that he beheld the plain of Jordan, that it was well-watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He doesn't say ' that it's kept on so - it wasn't even so when Moses wrote. But he says it was so before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. "Even as the garden of the Lord, man like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar." If you look in the Encyclopedia Brittannica for articles on ancient civilization, you'll find a good many of them are
written by Eduard Meyer. Eduard Meyer was a great German historian of  ancient history, perhaps the                                                                                                                                                      perhaps the greatest historian of ancient history who ever lived. And Eduard M. Meyor, as recently as 1928, shortly before his death, declared that the Jordan Valley was never used with irrigation and development of the soil as is done in Egypt under almost identical circumstances; but always was a barren and desolate valley* But Eduard, the last throe or four years of his life was getting, pretty elderly and he wasn't keeping up with archaeological developments as he had during all previous parts of his
life. Today, no one who is familiar with facts of archaeology would -make that statement because as early as 1924, we began to discover facts we hadn't previously known about the Jordan Valley. And in 1929 when I was on the expedition of the American Schools of Oriental Research, down through that Jordan Valley, we carried further those discoveries and we found that down in that Jordan Valley there are between forty and fifty hills which, when you examine them prove not to be hills at all - that is, not
natural hills. But they're artificial hills. They are hills in which the remains of an ancient town is buried. There are forty or fifty of them in the Jordan Valley. And you can't have forty or fifty towns in a valley like that unless you have plenty of irrigation and large crops growing and a fertile area to support its And examining the materials from those towns, it is found that almost without exception, what we find
from them comes from the time of Abraham and before. I remember at the Southern end of the Sea of Galilee seeing one which runs for over half a mile along. the Southern edge of that sea and there is the debris and remains of that town piled up high there at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee. And it begins at about 3,000 B. C., and it goes up to about 1800 B. C., and then it stops; and no more civilization at that place after about 1800 B. C. And from the time of Abraham on, the towns decrease and decrease until by the time of the coming of the Israelites, Jericho was about the only one left down there. As they disappeared, the area became a desolate wilderness, after that which began with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And in all subsequent times, people just couldn't have imagined that as an attractive section which Lot would have chosen to go down to.

One of the books that the higher critics are most sure is not genuine is the book of Daniel. This book of Daniel is a book which the destructive critics, without exception, say was not written at the time of Daniel, about 550 B. C., but they say that it was written at about 168 B. C.9 the time of the Maccabees. And they claim that it was many historical inaccuracies in it. And in archaeological discoveries, at one point and another, we have found increasing, evidence, not of inaccuracy but of the
accuracies of the statements of the Book of Daniel. But there is one very interesting place which at first sight appears to be an inaccuracy and a very striking, one. That is in connection with the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel, You remember that in that fifth chapter we have the story of Balshazzar and his feast. And in that story we read how Belshazzar gave this great feast and at the feast he was troubled because a hand came out and wrote soma words on the wall. And he called for somebody to tell
him what it meant, and nobody could tell him. And he said if anyone will toll me what it means, I will make him the third ruler in the kingdom. And finally somebody told him about Daniel, and they called Daniel, and Daniel told him what it meant. And then we read that Belshazzar commanded and they clothed Daniel with scarlet and put a chain of gold about his neck and made a proclamation concerning him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. In that night was Balshazzar, the king of the Chaldcans slain. That's what we read here about the downfall of the Babylonian Empire,
Was that written in the time of Daniel, or was it written, as the higher critics say, four hundred years later? Well, we began making discoveries in Babylon. We began finding ancient writings there telling us of the history of that city, And pretty
soon we found accounts of various kings and we found the story of the last king of
Babylon and his name was Nabonidus. Now that doesent sound a bit like Balshazzar, does
it? His name was Nabonidus. And then we found that Nabonidus, after the Persians
conquered Babylon, was not killed, but that he was given a pension and he lived out the
rest of his life in happiness and devoted himself to the study of archaeology. That
seems to be a favorite occupation of emperors after their lands have boon conquered.
And you remember Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, after 1918, did the same thing - he retired to Holland and devoted himself to the study of archaeology and wrote one or two
books on the subject. But, Nabonids was not killed, but devoted the rest of his life
to this study. that contradicts the Bible doesn't it? The Bible says that it
 was Belshazzar. The tablets say it was Nabonidus. The Bible says Belshazzar was killed; the tablets say that Nabonidus was not killed, but was allowed to live on and givin
a pension. Well now, what were the facts? If this was written at that very time, how
could they get the facts so twisted. But if this was written four hundred years later
when the Maccabees were fighting for their lives against the Syrian oppressors and
somebody wanted to write something to encourage the people to fight valiantly against
the Syrians, then it's perfectly simple that he could have gotten the thing mixed up
and just gotten the king's name wrong and gotten the facts wrong about his having been
killed and just got the story a little bit mixed. For after all, it points a good
moral; it helps you to encourage people to fight valiantly to imagine things that
might have happened in the past; that's the critical interpretation of it. And if
you got the names wrong and the facts wrong, it certainly would seem to look inaccurate.
However, Professor______ of the British Museum was not satisfied with this and he
began to make further study. Now the British are great collectors and they had selected from Mesopotamia hundreds of thousands of clay tablets from ancient times; so many they couldn't possibly road them all and they had them stored there in the British Museum. So many wonderful tablets they had stored there that when the Germans went on doing further excavation there in Mesopotamia and Babylon and didn't seem to find much# Professor______ of the University of Berlin said that excavation in the British Museum seemed to be more profitable than excavation in Babylon. 1T,!c-Jl, Professor _____ began excavation in the British Museum; he began to study these tablets. And as he studied them, he hunted through hundreds of clay tablets, because every commercial transaction in those days had to be written down. Some people, you know, have had the idea that in the time of Moses they couldn't read and write. Why, long before the tine of Moses, King Hammarabi, the King of Babylon; put up a big monument in the public square and on it he put the laws of Babylon and said in it that he has put these law s
up here in the public square of Babylon, so that everyone who thinks he is wronged can come here and read the law and know what his rights are. How far ahead they were of us in the United States today. If you want to know whether you're wronged or not, in the United States today, you may go and try to read the law; but it's pretty hard to find. You can go and hire a lawyer to tell you what it means and he may have to go to court to find out whether his interpretation is correct or not. But Hammarabi put the laws up there in the public square and he said anybody can come and read those laws and se e what his rights are. Well you can see the people could read them. And to be sure they can read, you read on in-the- laws and you road this: If a man loses some property and this man sees his property in the hands of somebody else, he can go to the law and say "that man has stolen my property," and they seize the other man and they put him to death; unless the other man can bring witnesses to prove that t he law
fully purchased that property, or unless he can bring sealed tablets that have the official seal of the witnesses on which prove he purchased it. And if he brings that, proving he purchased it from a third party, that third party is put to death, unless he can bring similar proof. So you see, it was worth a person's while to be able to read and write in those days. Reading and writing was common in the time of Moses, and long before, and there's no reason why the Bible could not have been written in those early times. But now here, we have these tablets written by these people in Babylon concerning all kinds of transactions and they're dated according to the kings. And _____ went and started reading them, one after another after another, tedious reading to try to see what he could learn about the final days of Babylon. And as he went through them he found one dated in the reign of King Nabonidus that mentioned the name Belshazzar. So there was a Belshazzar went at any rate. And then he found one which
told how a house was rented and it said this house was rented for three years by a certain man, and it said he was acting as Agent for Belshazzar, the King's son. So now
you've got Belshazzar right in the royal family. But he went on hunting further and
he found a tablet in which an oath was taken in the name of Nabonidus and of Belshazzar
And never were oaths taken in the name of anyone but either of God or a reigning king.
So here's proof that Belshazzar actually was a reigning king. So far, Professor
But now Professor Daugherty, of Yale University took up the study; and he Went on
further, going int7o -this matter and he published a book in the series of Yale Oriental
Researches in 1928J. which is -entitled, "Nabonidus and Belshazzar." And in this book.,
Professor Daugherty gave evidence after evidence which he showed proof conclusively
that Nabonildus., following a custom which many a king did in ancient times, made Balshazzar, his son, associate king with him; so they both were kings in the later years
of his reign. And then Nabonid is retired to Tema, an oasis in the Arabian Desert and
devoted himself to study there and left Belshazzar with the task of carrying on the
government and leading the army. And Belshazzar had to make his plans to defend Babylon against the Persian attack and Nabonidus was out there enjoying himself at this
oasis in the desert. And naturally when the Persians made their attack, they picked
the Commander in Chief and head of the nation there as their principle adversary; just
as in every war you pick someone you think of as the incarnation of everything wicked
on the other side. In 1914 to 1918, it was Kaiser Wilholm and in this last war it-was
Hitler* You always pick some individual and make him the incarnation of everything
evil. And so they picked Belshazzar for the one to hate. And there was no reason
to hate Nabonidus, particularly. And when they took Babylon, Professor Daugherty shows that Belshazzar was killed and we now have tablets that definitely prove it. But Nabonidus was allowed to live on and from then orf they just vilified Belshazzar or said nothing about him. And Professor Daugh erty went through the subsequent lit erature for the next five hundred years and found that of all the literature that has been preserved for us, from the noxt five hundred years, right up to Josephus who bases his statement on Daniel. Now Professor Daugherty says the Book of Daniel superior to all those other writings because it remembers the name Belshazzar corroctly it has the fact that Bolshazzar was killed and, more than that it has the fact there was a dual rulership in the kingdom; becausu twice in the chapter it is stated that the nnn who gives this
interpretation will be made the third ruler in the kingdom. And of course, nobody reading the Bible, prior to 1928, knew what that meant - the third ruler in the kingdom  They might make guesses, but they didn't know, because we didn't know the facts about Nabonidus and Belshazzar. But Nabonidus was the first ruler, Belshazzar, the second, and so Daniel here is made the third. And tho Bible thus preserved a record of this fact when it was othorwise completely forgotten. Novi I think it is interesting; some people say you can take your own interpretation,. After all, you got the facts, that's what's vital and then interpret them which way you want. But it's a good rule to interpret them the simplest way. Now there are two ways to interpret this. Here's one way: Daniel was there, Daniel know the facts, Daniel wrote his book and he tells what happened; that one way. Now here's the other way to interpret it, the way the critics must do if they hold to their view. Here were the Syrians, in 168 B. C.; a little band of Israelites under the Maccabees fighting for their lives against the Syrians. And here they were with the Syrian Army round about and in this
situation, one of the Jews says, "I must write a book to encourage people, I must make up some wonderful stories to encourage them to fight against the Syrians.  But,"He says," I must get my facts straight." And so, this man left the army, where every man was needed in the battle, and he smuggled his way through the Syrian lines clear up to the north of Palestine.. He made his way that long trip across the desert over to Mesopotamia and then down along the Euphrates River, until he came to Babylon. And when he got to Babylon, he managed to make friendship with one of the priests in one of the temples there and got him to teach him the old Babylonian language that was then practically forgotten. And he got him to permit him to go through the archives in the temple, those are archives that are now in the British Museum, and as he went through, day after day, as Professor did; he studied one tablet after another tablet and finally he got the true facts about Nabonidus and Belshazzar. And then when he had the true facts he sat down and he made up his story as he wrote his book. And
then having written his book, he made the long trip north along the Euphrates River, the long trip across the desert and then he smuggled his way through the Syrian lines, got down to the little band of Jews fighting for their lives and published a book to encourage them to go on fighting valiantly. Now, which seems more reasonable to be believe? Which is the more reasonable interpretation? We cannot always find truth of the exact fact, but I think we can say this that when we got the facts together, all
that we have, we will find that in many cases it's absolutely clear and in most cases it is quite clear that the most reasonable interpretation of them is the interpretation which the Bible gives. The Christian need never fear fact; we never have any reason to close our eyes to facts. God is the Creator of the universe and the facts are facts which God has established. And if we get the true facts, we will find that they fit with the statements of the Word of God. I don't want to give you the idea that
it's extremely simple; it's a complicated study, it's a difficult study* Many people will talk like this and say, "Oh, it must be thrilling, to study archaeology.. just a thrilling study all this time." Well, you have days and weeks and months of hard drudgery working over fact after fact, studying this and that* And finally merges a fact which throws marvelous light upon a statement of the Word of God and which is tremendously useful in increasing your confidence in the fact that the Bible is do pondable and true. How wonderful it is that we can know that this Bible is dependable.

People may dogmatically say things against it, they may ridicule it, they may say it's impossible to believe this; but who can say what is impossible? Fifty years ago, they said an airplane was impossible; but nothing is impossible with God and the Bible tells us the facts of what God has chosen to do. And most wonderful of all it tells us the facts which arc applicable to us today, It describes the condition of each one of us, it shows us our sin and our wickedness. We see ourselves as a mirror in it, and we see that we deserve nothing but eternal punishment at the hands of a righteous God. But thank God, it doesn't stop with that; it shows us that our sin need not remain; it shows us that God sent His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to come down from heaven and to die on the cross that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish but have eternal life. And what a wonderful thing it is, the message of salvation that God offering Jesus Christ said, "If I have told you of earthly things and you believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" The Bible tolls us of earthly things and it stands every t3st and we can believe it when it tolls us of heavenly things. Oh, may we study the Bible, may we seek to learn its truths, may we pray the Holy Spirit to apply it to our hearts, and may He use us to spread the message of salvation through His Word.