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BEASTS, HORNS, AND CROWNS #1
RIGGING NEXT YEAR’S ELECTION
It’s one of the impossibilities of American politics: predicting the future. You just can’t do it — and if he were still around, you could ask “President Dewey” about that. Back in late 2002, a few days before America went to the polls, the Democratic Party’s always buoyant chairman, Terence McAuliffe, was predicting a big win for his side. “We’re for sure going to hang onto the Senate,” he asserted. “I think we’re going to get the House back. And, by the way, down in Florida, our guy’s going to knock off Jeb Bush.” That would be sweet revenge for the “chad fiasco” from two years earlier.
Well, the DNC poster boy’s cheerful smile dimmed quite a bit as he faced the press after the votes were counted. His side had gone down in the House. They LOST the Senate. And the President’s little brother coasted to a smooth victory over novice candidate Bill McBride down in the Sunshine State.
But what would you think if a pundit could actually tell you about the rise and fall of upcoming kingdoms? And then be RIGHT on Wednesday morning? Who will sit in the White House ten years from now? What nations will be in NATO and out of it?
Many, many Christians find themselves spiritually challenged as they explore the great, mysterious prophecies found in the books of Daniel and Revelation. First of all, because we find here — written centuries before the fact — detailed chronologies about the major players that would dominate Planet Earth’s history. And then — this is the more important point — we find revealed in these 34 chapters, 12 in the Old Testament and 22 more at the very end of the New, a God who has His hand over everything. Kings rise up and kings come crashing down . . . because He permits it to be.
It was fascinating to read, in the aftermath of the 2002 elections here in the U.S., how George W. Bush’s White House had successfully helped create its own future. Not just by campaigning coast-to-coast in Air Force One in those last frantic weeks. But months earlier — in fact, almost immediately upon moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — Bush and his confidant Karl Rove began to strategize the senate races two years away. Instead of just saying to themselves, “Well, 34 races will grind themselves out, and we’ll get our fair share of ‘em,” the White House actively worked behind the scenes to actually PICK who would be in those races.
Ten states looked especially promising. Some of them were already “red,” meaning they’d gone for Bush last time around. Others were leaning his direction. And, as Newsweek put it, “Team Bush set about moving the chess pieces around the 2002 campaign board, clearing primary fields here, wooing reluctant entrants there.” In North Carolina, even though she’d run against Bush for the presidency, they liked Elizabeth Dole’s chances. They got her to run, and she won. In Minnesota, a good Republican named Tim Pawlenty wanted to run for Paul Wellstone’s senate seat. But straw polls showed that Norm Coleman would make a better senate candidate, so they talked Pawlenty into running for governor instead. Coleman won. And in state after state, the string-pulling worked. Before election night was over, Tom Daschle was handing the gavel back over to Trent Lott and drying his tears on a red-white-and-blue hand towel.
Well, friend, depending on whether your necktie has little elephants or donkeys on it, the Bush tactics are either blessedly brilliant or irritating beyond words. But let’s move to the equally rough-and-tumble arena of Bible prophecy, where a faithful servant named Daniel is given a scoop that even CNN’s Inside Politics and Bill Schneider can’t match.
It’s “the first year of Belshazzar,” we read in Daniel 7:1, which places our time machine approximately in the year 553 B.C. In his book, God Cares: The Message of Daniel For You and Your Family, author C. Mervyn Maxwell tells us that famous King Nebuchadnezzar has been dead for nine years. Daniel is an old man by now, maybe 70 years of age. Many decades earlier, as we read in the second chapter, Daniel had helped Nebuchadnezzar understand a parallel dream about a great image made of various kinds of metals. The image was a future depiction of four major global empires, followed by the coming of God’s kingdom. And now, in the sunset of his life, God visits him again with a panoramic vision that fills in some incredible details.
Let’s go right to the instant replay, shall we? And as we do, I want to say this, going back to the title of Dr. Maxwell’s book. I like what he says there: God Cares. Maybe we don’t think these beasts and symbols reveal a God of love, but friend, that’s precisely the message we find if we look behind the curtain. God is fully in charge. He not only knows the future, but He governs in its unfolding. And in all of these wide-screen splendors, the ending is the same each time: God rescues His children and sets up a kingdom of peace and safety. So . . . God Cares: The Message of Daniel FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY. What a beautiful picture!
The Adventist Bible Commentaries for the book of Daniel essentially make that same point; see what you think:
“The prophecy of chapter 7,” the scholars write, “covers essentially the same span of history as the dream of chapter 2, both reaching from the prophet’s day to the time of the establishment of the kingdom of God.” But now, this is an interesting distinction: “Chapter 2 deals largely with political matters. . . . The prophecy of chapter SEVEN, like those of the remainder of the book, was given especially for the people of God in order that they might understand THEIR PART in the divine plan for the ages.”
In other words, here in this great sea saga of the four beasts, we can especially expect to find developments that affect our own walk with the Lord. Our own salvation. Because really, does it matter a whole lot to you and me if an ancient kingdom named Babylon was out there 2500 years ago, and got wiped out by the Medo-Persian political party in the election of 539 B.C.? Instead of GOD Cares, we might say, WHO cares? But somehow, in the pounding surf of Daniel 7, we’re going to find something that matters to each of us today. So, here’s verse three:
“Daniel said: ‘In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.”
In Daniel 2, you may remember if you’d studied it, there was a great man with a head of gold, then with chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, and legs of iron. Four great empires, one after the other, with important symbolic details representing aspects of each. Now the same timeline is reinforced again; notice:
“The first was like a lion,” Daniel writes, “and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a man, and the heart of a man was given to it.”
Two details are worth noting. This book, God Cares, tells us that many Bible students of prophecy conclude that the sea itself has meaning; it generally refers to people and multitudes. You can get that link directly from Revelation 17:15, which says this:
“Then the angel said to me [John the Revelator], ‘The waters you saw” – brace yourself – “where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages.”
So these four global empires come surging to power from the then-known world, from populated places. And this lion with wings like an eagle is the first great beast to emerge from the brine and the foam.
In our NIV study Bible is a big chart right here in Daniel 7, and it runs a parallel line across from the “head of gold” in chapter 2 and this lion right here; both represent the kingdom Daniel was already living in: Babylon. Decades earlier, a brave kid named Daniel had said to Belshazzar’s grandpa — actually, probably a shirt-tail “step-grandpa” — “King Nebuchadnezzar, YOU are this head of gold.”
By the way, did you know that lions with wings were a common art theme in the Babylonian empire? Sometimes a lion had eagle’s wings, Dr. Maxwell points out; other times, it was an eagle with a lion’s head!
“The winged lion,” he writes, “is one of the forms of the beast often pictured in combat with Marduk, the patron god of the city of Babylon.”
And the Adventist commentary for this passage glowingly observes:
“The lion as the king of beasts and the eagle as the king of birds fittingly represented the empire of Babylon at the height of its glory.”
Well, friend, it’s very interesting, but there’s nothing hugely impressive about a news anchor who can tell us who’s President NOW. The lion represented Babylon, but Daniel lived in Babylon. He already knew that one. Would he be right in Round Two, then Three, and then Four?
And what about the cosmic election where you and I get to vote too? Stay tuned.
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