Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to the fifth part of our series on the Elijah prophets.

The British army was, and still is, famous for its 'redcoats', many regiments of which wore bright red, scarlet uniforms. If you saw a redcoat on the battlefield in the 17th-19th centuries you knew instantly who they were. It also unfortunately made them sitting ducks, a reason their colourful uniforms were dropped on the battlefield. However, anciently, before the invention of, or need for, camoflage, soldiers wore all sorts of distinctive coloured unforms. The British were not, however, the first 'redcoats'.

Fifteen hundreds years before there was another army famous for its 'redcoats'. The navi (prophet) Nahum had a vision of sodiers wearing 'redcoats' but he had no idea who they were because the soldiers of none of Israel's known enemies, or any they might have heard of from stories of distant lands, wore them. Yet he prophesied Assyria would be destroyed by 'redcoats':

"The shields of his mighty men are made red, the valiant men are ['clothed in' - ESV] in scarlet" (Nah.2:3, NKJV).

This is but one of hundreds of details in ancient biblical prophecy that demonstrate that the nevi'im (prophets) were accurate foretellers, that they were sometimes shown in vision what was about to happen, and sometimes in astonishing detail. Such matters could only be known supernaturally by an Omniscient Elohim (God) who knows everything about the future. Needless to say, uch a notion is intolerable to the sceptics, of course, who deny prophecy, revelation and miracles - by and large because they are materialists, atheists or agnostics. To 'explain' such things they are forced, because of their chosen worldview, to claim that what they are reading is not prophecy but history written after-the-fact. To justify their atheism they are forced to invent the hypothesis that accounts such as Nahum's were dishonestly concocted after-the-event as pieces of prophetic fiction set and in an imaginary prophetic environmen. Why did they do this, according to the atheists? To encourage the nation when it was going through difficulties later on, to fire them up with hope by means of political propaganda.

It is the belief of the sceptics that most of the Tanakh or Old Testament was written during the Babylonian Exile or as late as the inter-testamental period as a form of religious propaganda to encourage the exiles to believe that Elohim (God) would rescue them supernaturally as He has supposedly done before. And so imaginary stories about the past were allegedly devised - fanciful myths - to fire the people up and give them hope. That's the liberal position and the one you'll hear pretty much exclusively taught in the secular universities and compromised seminaries.

Now I realise the redcoat example is a miniscule detail. If you're sceptical enough you can explain away the red shields and cloaks of the Persian soldiers as simply being blood-drenched after lots of warfare. There is, admittedly, that element of doubt. But what if I could show you that there was concrete historical, archaeological evidence for the history of the Book of Daniel that contains numerous supernatural events which, to be frank, strains the credulity even of faithful Christians and Messianics? And what if I could prove to you that this evidence has been deliberately suppressed by the sceptics in order to preserve their atheistic worldview?

When you approach prophecy and miracles you cannot be strictly neutral. In my experience there is no such thing as absolute 'neutrality'. Therefore in dealing with the prophetic and the miraculous, as we have been doing now for the past month, you have to decide what your world-view is. Do you believe in Elohim (God)? And if you do, do you believe He is an Elohim (God) of miracles? Or are you an agnostic/atheist in which case your view of the Bible will inevitably be shaped by that particular world-view? In which case you are likely an evolutionist who believes not only in natural evolution with social and religious evolution too. There are also inbetween world-views that, for example, say that there is an Elohim (God), that the universe has evolved and that Elohim (God) basically started the whole cosmos up and then left it to run itself, perhaps poking His head into human affairs every now and then, or not at all.

Like it or not, we live in a scientific age and therefore we are not only obliged to be scientifically-minded by the culture, but we should also want to be so out of the sense of curiosity that Yahweh has given us about the universe He created. It is perfectly in order to want to explore and discover the physical reality around us - we are, after all, physicaly beings too - and so be enthusiastic about all kinds of truth, and be willing to do proper, rigorous science using tools we can all be agreed about whatever our beliefs about the invisible may be. As I speak, three new missions from the USA, China and the United Arab Emirates, have either landed, or are about to land, on the planet Mars. Some of you may, with me, have been watching the latest photographs and audio recordings from the Martian surface with great interest. I personally find it fascinating because I, like many others, believe the Red Planet may once have harboured life. I could be wrong it's the exploration that's the fun part.

What we can't do, as flat-earthers do, is bury our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, and pretend that science is some giant conspiracy and so choose to live in an unverifiable alternative physical reality, never mind about spiritual reality. And although I know this means extra work on our part, we should also have the same attitude towards what both sceptical and believing theologicans call 'Biblical Criticism'. We should listen to, and not be afraid of, what the sceptics say about the Bible and in particular about prophecy and miracles. We can respectfully consider the evidence they marshall because science is emotionally and spiritually neutral, or ought to be, even though we know other world-views tend to be held passionately and at times with extreme prejudice. But we can ourselves set a good example as scientists ourselves which is why I have no problem myself engaging those of different world-views.

Of course, I am speaking as an idealist here. We need to remember that George Orwell, who wrote Animal Farm and 1984 to warn us of the dangers of totalitarianisn (and especially communism), warned us that "there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." Just because someone is an intellectual with heaps of knowledge doesn't automatically mean that his world-view is the correct one. In other words, both the educated and uneducated are prone, at times, to delusion and we should not mock the ancients simply because they did not have the vast knowledge-base and critical tools of analysis that we enjoy today.

They may not have known much, if any, science but they were still capable of being accurate observers and of reporting their experiences honestly. Luke the phyician was a very capable historian. Paul the Apostle was one of the most brilliant theologians of his day who still runs rings round the vast majority of men and women who claim to be involved in that discipline. And as we're about to see, the claims made by the nav'im (prophets) were sometimes verified by those societies like Babylon which diligently kept detailed records of everything, carefully storing them (in the case of Babylon) in numerous temples for archaeologists to start discovering them from the 19th century onwards.

There's a reason Yahweh has given us an ancient text, the Bible, and not a modern one as the primary resource of "all truth" (Jn.16:13) pertaining to spiritual things. The ancients knew a thing or too and were not nearly as dumb as some moderns want to paint them as being. Take, for example, the Psalmist who, on the one hand, testifies twice that "the fool has said in his heart, 'There is no Elohim (God)'" (Ps 14:1, NKJV; cp. Ps.53:1) but who at the same time warned against being too cockey, saying, "a senseless man does not know, nor does a fool understand" (Ps.92:6, NKJV). The man of emunah (faith) should not mock the scientist, not should the scientist mock the man of faith. I speak both as a minister of the Gospel and a scientist, with a passion for astronomy, theology, sociology and the other disciplines that get involved in biblical analysis. I have been blessed to have one foot in each camp. Some of the most brilliant apologists of our day are men of Elohim (God) who are also scientists possessing, in consequence, a well rounded faith. Every believer today should at least have the High School equivalent of a science education.

Last week we had an overview of sorts, summarising what we have learned so far in our growing 'identikit' of a true navi (prophet). We looked into how the nevi'im (prophets) were called and at the family principle in which the 'sons of the nevi'im (prophets)' need to be raised and nurtured. We also tried to understand who wrote down their prophecies and how the prophetic books come to be arranged the way they are, using Ezekiel's 13 scrolls as a case study. We also looked at the evolution of language and scripts (yes, some kinds of 'evolution' are valid), and the dubious claims of the Bible Code sooth-sayers. In the remaining weeks that we have left to complete this series I want to look at the nevi'im (prophets) themselves, who they were, what backgrounds they had, and what kind of men were they? And we want to use all the tools that are available to us wherever possible, both the spiritual and the scientific. They were, after all, spiritual men living in a physical universe in a particular time, place and culture.

It is written in the Scriptures that "the hand of Yahweh" was upon these men. (This expression was also, interestingly, used by the pagans). It is used no less than 39 times in both Testaments. It was "the hand of Yahweh" that enabled Elijah to run faster than Ahab's chariot from Carmel to Jezreel, a feat which could not possibly have happened in the natural physical state in the domain of natural laws alone (1 Ki.18:46). Natural law would have to have been suspended for a short while just as it was when the Apostle Philip was supernaturallt transported to Azotus in an instant (Ac.8:39-40). (I know of people, by the way, who have experienced this supernatural transmaterialisation and totally believe in it myself, and not because I watched Star Trek as a teenager).

You can understand where the materialist sceptics get their scepticism from, can't you? The current human running record is held by Usain Bolt who recorded 28 mph or 45 km/h when sprinting 100 meters. But remember Elijah sprinted 24 miles or 40 kilometers! Depending on the horse pulling it, a chariot could generally go from between 35 to 40 mph which is about 56 to 64 km/h. The supernatural "hand of Yahweh" would have had to be on Elijah to accomplish that speed over such a distance. Or you have to agree with the sceptics that this was just a piece of exaggerated folklore to inspire confidence in Yahweh and His servants. But as I pointed out last week, exaggeration of this kind is not one of the qualities of Bible writers. There's hyperbole to be sure, as when the redactor of John's Gospel said that were all Yah'shua (Jesus) said have been written down, the world would have been big enough to contain all the books (Jn.21:25), but never lying.

Let's take another example, one which it a bit 'easier' for the natural man's credulity, even though the sceptic will claim this is just a hyerpactive imagination. I think now of Elisha, Elijah's spiritual 'son', who said:

"'...bring me a musician ('harpist' - NIV).' Then it happened, when the musician played, that the hand of Yahweh came upon him. And he said, 'Thus says Yahweh...'" (2 Kings 3:15-16, NKJV)

Something similar to that happened to me once, when beautiful music propelled me into the Ruach (Spirit) and I experienced Yahweh speaking to me through my heart. I can tell you the date, the location, and even the piece of music because it is still so vivid in my mind and heart. The piece of music was by Josef Strauss, the father of the better known Johann Strauss, and it was called Die Libelle or 'The Dragonfly', a polka-mazurka. The music was so light, so charming, so pure, and so beautiful that it metaphorically lifted my spirit high into the heavenlies. At the time I was in great distress because of a New Age cult that had seduced my first wife, and amongst other things I was distressed because this cult, which claimed to be Christian, rejected of the key doctrine of the Virgin Birth. The cult claimed that Mary's conception was the result of a natural act with her betrothed husband Joseph, even though the Scriptures strenuously deny that possibility.

The date was 14 May 1988, the location was Oxford in England, and I was sitting at my desk looking out into our little garden on the Banbury Road. Josef Strauss' music was playing and then I was elsewhere, and so I received the revelation called The Virgin Birth is True, which is section 11 of the Olive Branch. You can read it afterwards if you are interested as it very much set the spiritual tone for my ministry. Interestingly, one of the admonitions in that revelation was to forsake false prophets and teach the emet (truth) (vv.41-46), something I have tried to do as faithfully as I could these last 33 years. Maybe something like that happened to Elisha, I don't know. Many are the deeds of the nevi'im (prophets) and many the things they predicted which the sceptics wish to repudiate as fiction.

We have now looked at 'bitsy-witsy' pieces of evidence, Nahum's Persian redcoats and Elisha's harp-induced vision, but let's look at something far more substantial and larger. Let's choose a whole prophetic book which the sceptics passionately hate and which they have been attacking furiously and lying about for the better part of two centuries, the Book of Daniel. Without getting into the controversy of whether Daniel belongs to the Kethuvim (Writings) or the Nevi'im (Prophets) (personally I believe it is a category all on its own and is both), let's just plunge in. You know me, I like to take the most controversial topics and confront them come what may.

First, let's see what we are dealing with from the sceptics' side. The beautiful black leather-bound volume I am holding here which I picked up in Guildford, England, on the occasion of my mother's Memorial Service, is one of my favourite translations of the Bible which you have heard me make mention of many times. It's the Catholic Jerusalem Bible, an English translation of a French translation made in 1966 over half a century ago. It's a literary masterpiece and it's the only Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant Bible that uses the Divine Name 'Yahweh' throughout. But the institution that produced it, the Roman Catholic Church, even as long ago as 1966, was hijacked by the liberal so-called 'higher critcis'. This is what the Introduction to the Book of Daniel says:

"The Book of Daniel was written between 167 and 164 BC during the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes and before the Maccabean revolt....The aim of the book was to sustain faith and hope among the Jews in their persecutions by showing them the triumphs of Daniel over his own severe ordeals and temptations of the same kind: and to hold before them the vision of a time when the wrath of God (Elohim) would be satisfied...The historical setting undoubtedly disregards known facts, persons and dates and contains anachronisms in detail; the meaning of the book for its fitst readers was to be found in its insight into the present and the future in the purposes of God (Elohim)..." [1].

"...Written between 167 and 164 BC..."? So declared the Catholic scholars of the School of Biblical Studies in Jerusalem as there were not the slightest room for doubt. I don't know the exact date but what I absolutely do know from the archeological evidence is that it was completed shortly after the capture of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BC, nearly 400 years earlier around the time the events the book describes were happening. What exactly is it that terrifies the liberals that they are so determined to make it a work of fiction, or at the very least, semi-fiction? I'll tell you what upsets their unbelieving hearts:

• 1. That Daniel could recount the dream King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had without ever having heard an account of it from the lips of any man, and interpreting it accurately as well;
• 2. That three young Hebrew men could be thrown into a raging furnace and emerge unscathed without so much as a burned hair or singed piece of clothing;
• 3. That Nebuchadnezzar, for his boasting, could lose his mind and live as one of the animals in the field for several years, come to his senses again, and be retored to his throne;
• 4. That Daniel could be thrown into a den of hungry lions and emerge without so much as receiving a single scratch from the beasts;
• 5. That Daniel could accurately foretell the rise of kings and nations after Nebuchadnezzar, some of the predictions of which would be fulfilled by the end of the Tanakh (Old Testament), with some still awaiting fulfilment in our own day; and
• 6. That Yahweh would write a prophecy on the wall of Balshazzar's Palace with a ghostly finger.

So many incredible miracles and extraordinarily detailed prophecies all concentrated into one shortish books of 12 chapters is intolerable to the sceptic who, because of his chosen world-view, is chooses to dismiss them as so much mumbo-jumbo, and who is then forced to explain why such a document exists, who wrote it, and when it was produced, in order to fit in with his atheistic views. The two most hated books of the Tanakh (Old Tesatment) - the Book of Genesis (which testifies to creation and a Creator, and not evolution and blind forces), and the Book of Daniel (which has so many incredible miracles and prophecies) - are loathed by the atheistic, modernist scholars, and are the reason they have devoted so much time and effort in their bid to discredit them.

The story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego is laughed to scorn by the sceptics who claim they never existed because nobody can survive the fires of a raging furnace at all, let alone unsinged. Most of the same sceptics deny Daniel even existed either. However all four of these people are named multiple times in the cuneiform records of the Babylonian Empire of the time, along with members of their families and some of the imperial activities they were involved in. It's all been documented but if you look in the liberal commentaries, of which I have several, including an Anglican one from 1909, that subscribes to Darwinism, you'll see it says the Book of Daniel "presents...peculiar difficulties...most Christian scholars now hold views both of its interpretation and if its literary character, authorship, and date, different from those which were formerly accepted in the [Anglican] church" [2]. By that they mean the scholars were liberal in their outlook as far back as 1909 before the First World War, so this corrupted world-view has been festering and evolving for over a century, especially since Charles Darwin published Origin of the Species. The rot, that has now all but destroyed the Church of England in which I was raised, was well established even back then.

I should like to invite you, over the course of the next week, to read through the entire Book of Daniel, a couple of chapters a day, because we're going to come back to it next week with all the nitty-gritty evidence. It's a very easy task and reads like a thriller so you won't be bored in the least. The prophecies in the second half may stump you a little, as they have theologians for millennia, but that should not prevent us from digging into them in the near future because, as Yahweh told Daniel, the interpretation of these was sealed until the last days, and these days are unquestionably now. I want you to read the text both as a believer and as a sceptic and have a mental dialogue between the two.

Next week we're going to look at the evidence which will pleasantly surprise you. I apologise for the brevity of today's message but this is both because of somewhat worse than usual ill-health and because of prophetic events unfolding before our very eyes that I have had to give urgent attention to, events which may possibly furnish us with material for this series as we go along too. Certainly I now know that this is the time for studying the Books of Daniel and Revelation, which Yahweh has kept me at arms-length from for decades now because understanding them fully in the context of the times was not yet. I had not planned a deep excursion into Daniel but this we must now do by laying the historical groundwork so that you may know for sure that this is an historical document and entirely reliable, however fantastic the stories may seem to the 21st century sceptical postmodernist 'mind'. Indeed, it is going to be essential. So until next week, Yah willing, may the grace of our Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) be with you all. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] The Jerusalem Bible (Darton, Longman & Todd, London: 1968), p.1230
[2] J.R.Dummelow, The One Volume Bible Commentary (MacMillan, Lodnon: 1909), p.525

Acknowledgments