Daniel 5
IT is not in keeping with the object we have in view in these papers on the Book of Daniel to enter at any length upon the attacks of rationalists against the authenticity of the book or the truthfulness of its record. Hostility of heart to the great truth of the divine inspiration of Scripture is the main basis of their position, whilst conjecture and speculation are the great arguments with which they seek to overthrow faith. An overweening confidence in their own ability and professed honesty seems to blind their eyes to evidence which has satisfied the minds of men at least as learned and as capable of weighing evidence as they.
No one acquainted with the “Daniel controversy” will need to examine Dean Farrar’s recent work in order to find new weapons of attack against the Word of God. In this respect there is nothing new in the book. It is easy to be a compiler, but more profitable to be a compiler of facts than of doubts. We would not notice the work were it not that it is one of the latest popular attacks upon the inspiration of this portion of the Bible. Most of the objections so triumphantly arrayed have long since been thoroughly examined and satisfactorily answered. If obscurity still hangs round others, it would be wiser to wait for further light should God be pleased to vouchsafe it.
The Christian reader has learned to trust implicitly those divine oracles which have spoken in power to his heart and conscience. He has no need to appeal to the testimony of Assyrian antiquities, nor Babylonian cylinders and clay tablets. Nevertheless these exist, and in the providence of God these long-buried witnesses are rising from their resting-places to condemn the rashness of the rationalist who dares to impugn the veracity of Biblical history and none are better aware of their existence than the so-called “higher critics.”
It is difficult to imagine what standard of morality leads Dean Farrar to write in reference to the chapter of Daniel now open before us: “To those who, with the present writer, are convinced, by evidence from every quarter... that the Book of Daniel is the work of some holy and gifted Chasid in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, it becomes clear that the story of Belshazzar, whatever dim fragments of Babylonian tradition it may enshrine,” &c.; and this from the pen of a man who has given his solemn adherence to Article 6., “In the name of Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.”
It matters not to the Dean that the lips of the Son of God have testified that Daniel himself was the writer; no, it was a holy and gifted Chasid some 440 years after the time in which Daniel lived! If such were indeed the case he would need to be a man “gifted” with marvelous skill to be able to cheat the world with such an imposture for well-nigh two thousand years―an imposture which the “higher critics” have at length been enabled to unmask! But “holy”! Is this the adjective to apply to the perpetrator of such a fraud?
Enough, we trust, has been said to put our readers on their guard against such enemies of the Word of God, be their reputation what it may in the eyes of the religious world.
We have already seen that in chapter 3. and 4. God has been pleased to show us the moral traits that the Gentile powers possess more or less throughout their whole course from first to last. We now come to that character of evil which will infallibly bring clown the judgment of God upon the last representative of that world-system which began with Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had indeed acted in folly and wickedness, but he had been arrested in his course by the chastisement of the God of heaven. But Belshazzar’s sin reaches such a pitch that there is no remedy. Nebuchadnezzar had persecuted God’s people; Belshazzar sets himself in open antagonism to God Himself. This profanity and impiety led to his own ruin and that of the Babylonian dynasty.
It was for her sins that Jehovah had suffered Judah to be “carried away captive out of his own land.” “The Lord was as an enemy” to His people (Lam. 1:55Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy. (Lamentations 1:5)). Ile had “cast off His altar,” and “abhorred His sanctuary,” but was this a reason why, in the pride of his heart, Belshazzar should insult Him to His very face? There is a limit beyond which man’s sin cannot go with impunity. It was so with Babylon of old, and it will be so in the case of the last representative of the Gentile powers in a day not far removed. This character of blasphemy will come before us when considering the solemn outline of the future contained in chapter 7.
“Belshazzar the king made a great feast.” Noted for its grandeur and magnificence Babylon had always been, but on this occasion it had exceeded itself in its dazzling display of earthly glory. Surrounded by a thousand of his lords, he abandons himself to the unbridled gratification of the lusts and passions of his depraved heart. Profanity and impiety are stamped upon this closing scene of Babylon’s greatness. God was not in all his thoughts, unless it were to mock and insult Him. The vessels of the Lord’s house which was in Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar his father had carried to Babylon. Belshazzar “whiles he tasted the wine, commanded” that they should be brought forth, and in impious defiance “the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines, drank in them.” Intoxicated with the “pleasures of sin,” they drank wine, and “praised the gods of gold,” &c. What a picture of the world without God! How like to much that takes place to-day in the heart of Christendom itself!
Long years before had the Lord foretold Babylon’s doom. Well-nigh one hundred and fifty years previous to this very night Isaiah the prophet had been inspired to enter in descriptive detail into the circumstances of Babylon’s fall, even mentioning by name, and that long before his birth, the one that should be raised up to carry into effect Jehovah’s judgment upon her (Isa. 44:28, 45:1)
Later on, as the hour of her destruction drew near, “Seraiah, a quiet prince,” was deputed to read all the words that had been written by Jeremiah the prophet against Babylon (Jer. 1., 51). But all was in vain, and now the sin that had been unchecked by all these solemn warnings has reached its climax, and the writing on the wall stands out before the astonished and terrified gaze of the king and his associates.
Eyes that up till now had been blind were opening. Consciences that hitherto had slumbered now began to condemn. Hearts that but a moment ago were levity itself now were filled with troubled thoughts. What took place in Babylon of old will soon be re-enacted in more guilty, because more privileged, Christendom. Indeed, much that is said of the literal Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar’s and Belshazzar’s days is repeated in the Apocalypse with reference to the spiritual Babylon that is now in rapid formation.
Space will not admit of any lengthened notice of the remainder of the chapter, the details of which are so well known, and have been so often dwelt upon. The terror of the king; the impotence of the wise men of Babylon, who “could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof” how true is this of all the wise men of Christendom, rationalists, higher critics, call them what you please. Then, the separation from the world, both in heart and life, of Daniel; the consequent spiritual intelligence, “the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him”; his calm and dignified bearing before the king; his bold and fearless testimony―how instructive it all is, and how well it deserves our serious and prayerful study!
“In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.”