Materialistic Naturalism: Is There Really a Spirit Realm?
by Terry Wane Benton
To show that God has spoken (Hebrews 1:1-2) from His realm into ours, we would need words from Him that would demonstrate knowledge and power over our future. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar of such a God who reveals secrets. (Read Daniel 2). He told Nebuchadnezzar what he dreamed and what the dream meant. He claimed that this was how God revealed the future. He said that his dream involved him (Nebuchadnezzar) and three consecutive kingdoms that would follow his. He told him that his kingdom would fall to the Medes and Persians, then that kingdom would fall to the Greeks, and then that kingdom would fall to a fourth, which turned out to be the Roman Empire. He said that during that fourth kingdom God would set up a different and everlasting kingdom, one that would not fall as earthly kingdoms do. This prophecy in chapter 2 combines with a detailed prophecy in chapter 9.
Now, at this point, the Israelites had been taken captive by the Babylonians, and the Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and Jeremiah had said that the captivity would last 70 years. However, Chapter 9 prophesied that there would be a call to rebuild the temple, and within a certain amount of time after the temple was rebuilt, the Messiah would come to put an end to sin and bring in everlasting righteousness. He would be “cut off” (die), and on the wings of abominations, the temple would be destroyed again.
These are predictions that transcend the ability of human wisdom alone to predict. They demonstrate by coming true that there is a greater power outside of our realm that communicates words beyond the ability of human imagination. The claim of being a revelation from God’s mind to the human mind, as expressed in Daniel, is proof that “there is a God who reveals secrets.”
While some have tried to explain away these words of foreknowledge, they fail to prove their case. Some tried to make Daniel to have been a fake who wrote after the events, but that doesn’t work because the latest people who could claim a fake Daniel would be about 164 BC, which is way before the Roman Empire and still yet way before the Messiah and the last destruction of the temple in AD 70. They would need this Daniel to write after AD 70, but they know they can’t so they come up with another option, and that is to make these words refer to the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his desecration (defiling) of the temple in 171 BC, and then make the “Messiah” refer to the High Priest Onias III, but that doesn’t work either. While the temple was desecrated by Antiochus and Onias III was killed away from Jerusalem, the temple remained standing. The Maccabees waged war and regained the temple, claiming that all this was not “destruction” but rather a “chastening” from the Lord. So, that evil period came nowhere near fulfilling the prophecy of Daniel.
Only God could predict that series of kingdoms and say that the fourth kingdom would be when He would send His King and Kingdom (the Messiah). The Maccabean period was not part of the fourth kingdom period, and it did not coincide with the destruction of the temple. That was all connected to Jesus and Jesus alone. The temple, Jesus said, was to fall in that very generation (Matthew 24:1-35), and it did. Who could lay all of that out hundreds of years in advance? Only a supernatural power could speak it and, hundreds of years later, make it happen. So, God has really spoken!
But, there is so much more about the Bible that makes me know this is not just human wisdom put in human words. These are divine words brought into human words. You can see many more prophecies of Jesus and numerous ways that God embedded the image of Jesus’ work into the words of the Old Testament. It is as if He guided the choice of events and, underneath, superimposed the image of Jesus. Hundreds of Old Testament narratives serve a dual purpose: to recount the immediate event, yet word it in a way that reveals something about Jesus beneath the surface. This is beyond the wisdom of men and reveals a supernatural wisdom that predicted events way ahead of time, also embedding word-images of Jesus so that man could not claim every prophecy was retrofitted to make it appear as if it were fulfilled. Embedded imagery is another way God takes away the arguments that the Bible is a product of human wisdom.
