Daniel

135:5.2About one hun­dred years be­fore the days of Je­sus and John a new school of re­li­gious teach­ers arose in Pales­tine, the apoc­a­lyp­tists. These new teach­ers evolved a sys­tem of be­lief that ac­counted for the suf­fer­ings and hu­mil­i­a­tion of the Jews on the ground that they were pay­ing the penalty for the na­tion’s sins. They fell back onto the well-known rea­sons as­signed to ex­plain the Baby­lo­nian and other cap­tiv­i­ties of for­mer times. But, so taught the apoc­a­lyp­tists, Is­rael should take heart; the days of their af­flic­tion were al­most over; the dis­ci­pline of God’s cho­sen peo­ple was about fin­ished; God’s pa­tience with the gen­tile for­eign­ers was about ex­hausted. The end of Ro­man rule was syn­ony­mous with the end of the age and, in a cer­tain sense, with the end of the world. These new teach­ers leaned heav­ily on the pre­dic­tions of Daniel, and they con­sis­tently taught that cre­ation was about to pass into its fi­nal stage; the king­doms of this world were about to be­come the king­dom of God. To the Jew­ish mind of that day this was the mean­ing of that phrase—the king­dom of heaven—which runs through­out the teach­ings of both John and Je­sus. To the Jews of Pales­tine the phrase “king­dom of heaven” had but one mean­ing: an ab­so­lutely righ­teous state in which God (the Mes­siah) would rule the na­tions of earth in per­fec­tion of power just as he ruled in heaven—“Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

137:7.6The scribes and rab­bis, taken to­gether, were called Phar­isees. They re­ferred to them­selves as the “as­so­ciates.” In many ways they were the pro­gres­sive group among the Jews, hav­ing adopted many teach­ings not clearly found in the He­brew scrip­tures, such as be­lief in the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead, a doc­trine only men­tioned by a later prophet, Daniel.

126:3.6In the course of this year Je­sus found a pas­sage in the so-called Book of Enoch which in­flu­enced him in the later adop­tion of the term “Son of Man” as a des­ig­na­tion for his be­stowal mis­sion on Uran­tia. He had thor­oughly con­sid­ered the idea of the Jew­ish Mes­siah and was firmly con­vinced that he was not to be that Mes­siah. He longed to help his fa­ther’s peo­ple, but he never ex­pected to lead Jew­ish armies in over­throw­ing the for­eign dom­i­na­tion of Pales­tine. He knew he would never sit on the throne of David at Je­ru­sa­lem. Nei­ther did he be­lieve that his mis­sion was that of a spir­i­tual de­liv­erer or moral teacher solely to the Jew­ish peo­ple. In no sense, there­fore, could his life mis­sion be the ful­fill­ment of the in­tense long­ings and sup­posed Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the He­brew scrip­tures; at least, not as the Jews un­der­stood these pre­dic­tions of the proph­ets. Like­wise he was cer­tain he was never to ap­pear as the Son of Man de­picted by the Prophet Daniel.

135:3.2Eliz­a­beth kept John posted about Pales­tinian and world af­fairs, and his con­vic­tion grew deeper and deeper that the time was fast ap­proach­ing when the old or­der was to end; that he was to be­come the her­ald of the ap­proach of a new age, “the king­dom of heaven.” This rugged shep­herd was very par­tial to the writ­ings of the Prophet Daniel. He read a thou­sand times Daniel’s de­scrip­tion of the great im­age, which Zach­a­rias had told him rep­re­sented the his­tory of the great king­doms of the world, be­gin­ning with Baby­lon, then Per­sia, Greece, and fi­nally Rome. John per­ceived that al­ready was Rome com­posed of such poly­glot peo­ples and races that it could never be­come a strongly ce­mented and firmly con­sol­i­dated em­pire. He be­lieved that Rome was even then di­vided, as Syria, Egypt, Pales­tine, and other prov­inces; and then he fur­ther read “in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a king­dom which shall never be de­stroyed. And this king­dom shall not be left to other peo­ple but shall break in pieces and con­sume all these king­doms, and it shall stand for­ever.” “And there was given him do­min­ion and glory and a king­dom that all peo­ples, na­tions, and lan­guages should serve him. His do­min­ion is an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion, which shall not pass away, and his king­dom never shall be de­stroyed.” “And the king­dom and do­min­ion and the great­ness of the king­dom un­der the whole heaven shall be given to the peo­ple of the saints of the Most High, whose king­dom is an ev­er­last­ing king­dom, and all do­min­ions shall serve and obey him.”

135:3.3John was never able com­pletely to rise above the con­fu­sion pro­duced by what he had heard from his par­ents con­cern­ing Je­sus and by these pas­sages which he read in the Scrip­tures. In Daniel he read: “I saw in the night vi­sions, and, be­hold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and there was given him do­min­ion and glory and a king­dom.” But these words of the prophet did not har­mo­nize with what his par­ents had taught him. Nei­ther did his talk with Je­sus, at the time of his visit when he was eigh­teen years old, cor­re­spond with these state­ments of the Scrip­tures. Not­with­stand­ing this con­fu­sion, through­out all of his per­plex­ity his mother as­sured him that his dis­tant cousin, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, was the true Mes­siah, that he had come to sit on the throne of David, and that he (John) was to be­come his ad­vance her­ald and chief sup­port.

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.

136:1.6There was one fea­ture of the be­stowal of Mi­chael which was ut­terly for­eign to the Jew­ish con­cep­tion of the Mes­siah, and that was the union of the two na­tures, the hu­man and the di­vine. The Jews had var­i­ously con­ceived of the Mes­siah as per­fected hu­man, super­hu­man, and even as di­vine, but they never en­ter­tained the con­cept of the union of the hu­man and the di­vine. And this was the great stum­bling block of Je­sus’ early dis­ci­ples. They grasped the hu­man con­cept of the Mes­siah as the son of David, as pre­sented by the ear­lier proph­ets; as the Son of Man, the super­hu­man idea of Daniel and some of the later proph­ets; and even as the Son of God, as de­picted by the au­thor of the Book of Enoch and by cer­tain of his con­tem­po­raries; but never had they for a sin­gle mo­ment en­ter­tained the true con­cept of the union in one earth per­son­al­ity of the two na­tures, the hu­man and the di­vine. The in­car­na­tion of the Cre­ator in the form of the crea­ture had not been re­vealed be­fore­hand. It was re­vealed only in Je­sus; the world knew noth­ing of such things un­til the Cre­ator Son was made flesh and dwelt among the mor­tals of the realm.

43:3.4Down through the ages there has been great con­fu­sion on Uran­tia re­gard­ing the var­i­ous uni­verse rulers. Many later teach­ers con­fused their vague and in­def­i­nite tribal de­i­ties with the Most High Fa­thers. Still later, the He­brews merged all of these ce­les­tial rulers into a com­pos­ite De­ity. One teacher un­der­stood that the Most Highs were not the Su­preme Rulers, for he said, “He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.” In the Uran­tia rec­ords it is very dif­fi­cult at times to know ex­actly who is re­ferred to by the term “Most High.” But Daniel fully un­der­stood these mat­ters. He said, “The Most High rules in the king­dom of men and gives it to whom­so­ever he will.”

97:10.3Na­tional ego­tism, false faith in a mis­con­ceived prom­ised Mes­siah, and the in­creas­ing bond­age and tyranny of the priest­hood for­ever si­lenced the voices of the spir­i­tual lead­ers (ex­cept­ing Daniel, Eze­kiel, Hag­gai, and Malachi); and from that day to the time of John the Bap­tist all Is­rael ex­pe­ri­enced an in­creas­ing spir­i­tual ret­ro­gres­sion. But the Jews never lost the con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; even to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ they have con­tin­ued to fol­low this De­ity con­cep­tion.