New Year’s Eve

Well, 2006 is almost gone. I can tell by the nearly constant fireworks I’m hearing. And frankly, I’m not too sorry to see it go. The year had some good moments, but it seemed to hold a lot more questions than answers. I am looking forward to a clean slate in 2007 and am hoping and praying that I can make better use of it than I did this year.

I only transported three people to church this morning. When the students are off-campus, nobody is visiting their contacts out in the barangays. So some of the casual attendees slack off on their attendance. Of course, a lot of people are traveling for the holidays, too. I had just picked up my last rider in the barangay and was headed back out onto the main road when one of the ladies hollered at me to stop. Mr. Ambrocio, an older gentleman, had gotten in the back of the vehicle. Neither of the fold-down seats were folded down, but he didn’t change that. He was just squatting in the back of the car, and apparently having some trouble doing so. I don’t know if he didn’t know how to fold the seats down or if he didn’t think he should change something on my car. At any rate, I talked him into moving to the vacant front passenger seat.

We didn’t have our English Sunday school class last week, so we had our Christmas lesson today. Mrs. Clark taught on the story of the Magi and the flight to Egypt. Pastor Bong preached on John 10:10 in the morning worship service, and we celebrated communion together. The elements today were cookies and Coke. Grape juice is pretty expensive and not readily available, so substitutes are often used. We also ran out of communion cups, so I only had a cookie.

After a nap, I got up and tried to do some thinking about budgeting for the new year. Even though I think we live pretty frugally, expenses don’t seem to fall far short of income. I know when we move back to the US this spring, we’re in for a reality check. A lot of our expenses are covered here that we’re going to have to shell out for when we get back. Hopefully, we’re able to still keep body and soul together and still have enough to give to others. I’m not losing any sleep over it.

Well, the fireworks are getting louder. In just a few minutes, we’re having our new year’s fellowship here on campus. It’s not technically a watch-night service, just a little devotional time, some snack-eating and playing games. I personally would rather go to bed and get my new year started right (with a full night’s sleep) but I realize that this is probably an important event to some, and I’m sure I will have fun.

A few choice tidbits from Epictetus

If you are told that such an one speaks ill of you, make no defence against what was said, but answer, He surely knew not my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these only!

In company avoid frequent and undue talk about your own actions and dangers. However pleasant it may be to you to enlarge upon the risks you have run, others may not find such pleasure in listening to your adventures…To border on coarse talk is also dangerous. On such occasions, if a convenient opportunity offer, rebuke the speaker. If not, at least by relapsing into silence, colouring, and looking annoyed, show that you are displeased with the subject.

When Xanthippe was chiding Socrates for making scanty preparation for entertaining his friends, he answered:—“If they are friends of ours, they will not care for that; if they are not, we shall care nothing for them!”

A few choice tidbits from Epictetus

 If you are told that such an one speaks ill of you, make no defence against what was said, but answer, He surely knew not my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these only!

In company avoid frequent and undue talk about your own actions and dangers. However pleasant it may be to you to enlarge upon the risks you have run, others may not find such pleasure in listening to your adventures…To border on coarse talk is also dangerous. On such occasions, if a convenient opportunity offer, rebuke the speaker. If not, at least by relapsing into silence, colouring, and looking annoyed, show that you are displeased with the subject.

When Xanthippe was chiding Socrates for making scanty preparation for entertaining his friends, he answered:—“If they are friends of ours, they will not care for that; if they are not, we shall care nothing for them!”

2007 Statistical Report

Thanks to Wendie for pointing out this article about the Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States.

Some of the statistics I found most interesting:

Americans spent more of their lives than ever — about eight-and-a-half hours a day — watching television, using computers, listening to the radio, going to the movies or reading. Adolescents and adults now spend, on average, more than 64 days a year watching television. 13 million created a blog.

Americans are getting fatter, but now drink more bottled water per person than beer.

More Americans were born in 2004 than in any years except 1960 and 1990. Meanwhile, the national divorce rate, 3.7 divorces per 1,000 people, was the lowest since 1970.

And, of course, one thing Americans produce more of is solid waste — 4.4 pounds per day, up from 3.7 pounds in 1980. What a delightful job it must be to work for the Census Bureau!

2007 Statistical Abstract

Thanks to Wendie for pointing out this article about the Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States.

Some of the statistics I found most interesting:

Americans spent more of their lives than ever — about eight-and-a-half hours a day — watching television, using computers, listening to the radio, going to the movies or reading. Adolescents and adults now spend, on average, more than 64 days a year watching television. 13 million created a blog.

Americans are getting fatter, but now drink more bottled water per person than beer.

More Americans were born in 2004 than in any years except 1960 and 1990. Meanwhile, the national divorce rate, 3.7 divorces per 1,000 people, was the lowest since 1970.

And, of course, one thing Americans produce more of is solid waste — 4.4 pounds per day, up from 3.7 pounds in 1980. What a delightful job it must be to work for the Census Bureau!

OK Go

I know most of you have probably seen OK Go’s treadmill video but if you somehow missed it, check it out. It’s just amazing that they can shoot a whole video this complex in a single take. If you like that kind of thing, you might check out their footwork in this other video of theirs. We’ve come a long ways since Jamiroquai.

Which God Exists?

Agnosticism is the belief that it is not possible to know if there is or is not a God; the existence of God is not knowable. The word agnosticism is derived from the negative a combined with the Greek word gnosis which means “knowledge.” So agnosticism is the belief that God cannot be known. To say you haven’t seen sufficient evidence for God’s existence is a more intellectually honest position than atheism. Followers of this worldview are called agnostic because they state they have looked at the evidence and have concluded that there is no God.  But, the interesting thing with them is that they say they are open to further evidence for God’s existence.  Agnostics will often claim that they are on neutral ground; they’re not saying that God exists, but they’re not saying that he doesn’t exist either. They are withholding judgment until more information is available.

Weak agnosticism actually isn’t a view of God at all; it is just a description of a person’s lack of knowledge and unwillingness or inability to make a decision. Clearly, agnosticism doesn’t meet any of the characteristics of our glass slipper, so let’s quickly move on to another view.

Pantheism is the view that everything that exists is God. Pantheism is expressed in several ways. Some pantheists believe that God is a force that is in all things; this is the idea that drives the Star Wars movies. Other pantheists say that God is the totality of everything. Everything is one, and one is everything. Other pantheists see God existing in many different forms, each of which is part of the ultimate reality. Some pantheists believe that the natural world is just part of reality; others believe that the natural world is just an illusion. Pantheists believe that God is not a person; everything that exists is part of God, including us humans. We are part of an impersonal ultimate reality; our individual personhood is just an illusion. When we die, we are absorbed back into the impersonal reality or God.

In pantheism, there are no dualities or opposites. Therefore, there can be no right and wrong, good and evil or true and false. Because God isn’t a person, it can’t have a moral will. Whatever exists is real; everything else is an illusion. There are no moral distinctions. Some Hindu gods are both good and evil, because in pantheism, there isn’t really a difference between good and evil. Even logic and reason are just illusions in the pantheistic view, because they deal with opposites—things that are true or false. Logic and reason do not exist; they are meaningless.

Again, pantheism doesn’t answer the things that we discovered in the cosmological, design or moral arguments. Pantheism says that God is impersonal. Because only persons can have intelligence, God cannot be intelligent. Because only persons can have purpose and engagement, God cannot be engaged in the world. If everything that exists is a part of God, then nothing is transcendent, including God. Finally, pantheism states that the universe is eternal and unchanging. That would require the existence of actual infinites in the real world, which the Kalam cosmological argument proves is not possible.

There is a form of pantheism, known as scientific pantheism, which is based on the observation that we are made up of the same matter and energy that makes up the rest of the universe. This idea states that the universe makes us, sustains us, destroys us, and absorbs us back into itself when we die. The universe is the only thing that exists. If we properly understand the universe, we will have a sense of awe, reverence, humility and respect. One of the things that make scientific pantheism different is that it doesn’t deny opposites; in fact, it heavily depends on logic and reason.

Either way, pantheism only meets five of our “glass slipper” requirements: God exists, is necessary, is powerful, is non-contingent and is unique.

Some of the religions that adopt a pantheistic worldview are Hinduism, Taoism, some forms of Buddhism, the New Age movement, paganism, some forms of Unitarian Universalism, Christian Science, and Scientology. Some of the notable thinkers who embraced pantheism are Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein and Henry David Thoreau.

Even though some supposedly intelligent people have been pantheistic, this worldview has some difficult problems. One problem has to do with morality. If we are all going to be absorbed back into the universe when we die, what difference does it make how we live while we are here on earth? What is our motivation to live moral lives? Billy Graham and Osama bin Laden will both go to the same place when they die. That is a hard concept for most people to accept, and it also gives a very shaky foundation for life.

Pantheists also say that we are a part of an unchanging God. But if we come to realize that we are a part of God, it means that we have changed, which means that God has changed. Pantheism’s answer to this problem is that the problem is based in reason and logic, which do not actually exist. Unfortunately, this solution uses logic and reason to prove that logic and reason do not exist. Logic and reason exist, or they don’t; you can’t have it both ways. To make any kind of claim, you must use logic and reason. Apologist Ravi Zacharias points out that pantheistic Hindus look both ways before crossing the street. Their worldview says that the buses are just an illusion, but their logic and reason tells them that the buses are real and will cause them real pain if the buses run over them. It’s very hard to live without logic.

And, as I’ve already mentioned, pantheism would require the existence of actual infinites—an impossibility. So, pantheism is a poor way to understand God. It doesn’t match up with realities that we can know, even apart from religion. We have to keep looking.

Our next “foot” is panentheism, which says that God is immanent within the universe but also transcends it. In other words, God is distinct from the world, but he also depends on it. God comes from the world, and the world comes from God; they depend upon each other. Some apologists have said that, in panentheism, “God is to the world what the soul is to the body.” God is ultimate reality; panentheism literally means “all in God.” Because our souls are part of the ultimate reality, we are all a part of God, even though we are not God. And because the world is always changing, God is always changing. As we learn and grow, God becomes more powerful. And then God uses that new power to create new things for us to learn. God is learning and growing, just as we are.

One way to get a picture of panentheism is to view God as both a seed and a tree. The tree is the potential—everything God could become. The seed represents the actual—the state that God (and the world) is in now. But in panentheism, the seed never actually becomes a tree. God is always growing and changing, but he never becomes all that it is possible for him to become. God is always in process; panentheism is sometimes called “process theology.”

In panentheism, the universe and God are eternally existent. But at the same time, God is finite and temporal. He is always changing; in order for something to change or grow, it must be lacking something. And change is a process of sequence over time; things change from one thing to another over time. So, in pantheism, God is finite and time-bound and yet also eternal.

Panentheism really was only developed over the past century, but some of its ideas can be traced back to Plato and Socrates. Some Christian and Jewish groups have adopted panentheistic ideas. For example, some Latin American groups have mixed panentheism with Marxism and Catholicism to create liberation theology.

In panentheism, God exists, is necessary, is powerful, is intelligent, is personal, is engaged and is unique. However, he is not transcendent, non-contingent or moral. Therefore, it is an inaccurate and insufficient view of God. If we believe in an eternally existing universe, we again have the problem of actual infinites existing in the real world. Panentheism also fails to give a basis for morality. If morals are based in God but God is always changing, then morals also have the potential to always be changing. They become flexible, and they lose their force. Why act morally if morality may change and my immoral acts may become moral on their own?

Another worldview is finite godism, which sees God as a personal, loving and good First Cause. But because evil exists in the world, God must be limited; he must not be powerful enough to control evil or get rid of it. God is good and does not like evil, but he is helpless to stop it from happening. Finite godism points to the imperfections of the universe and says that they reflect their source—an imperfect God. Since the universe is finite, the God who created it must also be finite. Most people who believe in finite godism do not believe that God performs miracles.

Because God is finite, it’s questionable whether he can be the ground for morality. The source of morality is ultimately unknown. Some think that God is the source of morality, while others place it elsewhere.

Finite godism isn’t directly taught in any religion, although some of the more liberal schools of Judaism would adopt some of its ideas. There is a religion called Zoroastrianism that is a form of finite godism. Zoroastrianism teaches that there are two self-existing gods—the Wise Lord and the Destructive Spirit—which are at war with each other. Since each of these gods is self-existing and each created different things, they are finite. The Wise Lord is limited to only good things, and the Destructive Spirit is limited to only evil things.

Probably the most famous expression of finite godism is found in Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Kushner decides that the presence of suffering in the world must mean that God isn’t powerful enough to stop it.

How does finite godism do on our checklist? It does teach that God exists; is transcendent, intelligent and engaged; and possibly is a moral being. But the finite God is not necessary, powerful, non-contingent, personal or unique. Finite godism is faced with some serious questions. If God is finite, where did he come from? And if he’s not powerful, where did the universe come from? If he isn’t the source of morality, does it matter if we behave morally or immorally? If he is the source of morality, can God really enforce his moral judgments, since he is limited in his power? Zoroastrianism teaches that God is at war with the Destructive Spirit; what if the Destructive Spirit wins? Apparently, God is not a necessary being, because if he ceased to exist, everything created by the Destructive Spirit would continue. But a God who is not necessary isn’t really God. So finite godism doesn’t hold together logically, and it doesn’t come close to fitting our glass slipper.

Atheism

Every religion has a different conception of God. There are some shared characteristics between the various faiths; for example, most religions claim that people need salvation. But when we begin to compare religions, we see that the differences are often far greater than the similarities. Each religion presents a fundamentally different way of attaining salvation. These basic differences are the things that make religions distinct; it is impossible to reconcile them. Logically, contradictory statements cannot all be true; either one picture of God is true, or all of them are false.

Some would say that each religion has a little bit of the truth, and that if you would combine all of the “little bits,” you would see the true God. Sometimes the story of the blind men and the elephant is used to illustrate this idea. Here’s a version of the story that I found on a Jain website.

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”

They had no idea what an elephant was. They decided, “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Every one of them touched the elephant.

“Hey, the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.

“Oh, no! It is like a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.

“Oh, no! It is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the
trunk of the elephant.

“It is like a big hand fan” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

“It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

“It is like a solid pipe,” said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, “What is the matter?” They said, “We cannot agree to what the elephant is like.” Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, “All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said.”

“Oh!” everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have different perspective which we may not agree to. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, “Maybe you have your reasons.” This way we don’t get in arguments.

There is a problem with this story as an illustration, though. If God is the elephant and we are the blind men, who is the wise man that passes by to tell us about the big picture? There is no person who is standing far enough away from the situation to see the big picture. So this story which tries to show that nobody has a correct picture of God actually illustrates the opposite. To say that somebody has a complete and correct view of God—that they see the whole elephant—is exactly what this story says can’t happen. So, we have the question: What is God like? Which God exists?

In our past discussions, we have looked at some good reasons to believe that a God exists. We have also come up with a partial list of some of the characteristics or attributes that this God must have. From the cosmological and design arguments, we learned that God is necessary, powerful, transcendent, non-contingent, intelligent and personal. The moral argument told us that God has a moral will and purpose and that he is engaged in the world; that is, he cares about how people live. We can add one other item to our checklist; God is unique—there is nothing and no one else similar to him. If God meets all of the other characteristics we have listed, there could not be anything that exists except what he has created. No other god could exist.

So, we can make a checklist that will help us eliminate some false ideas of God. If you remember the story of Cinderella, you remember how the prince went around his kingdom with a glass slipper to find the girl he fell in love with at the ball. We can use our “glass slipper” to check out some ideas of God to see if it fits on them. Religions that deny these attributes must have a false view of God or, at least, needs to explain how their god can really exist. So let’s take our checklist and look for the real God.

The first worldview we will examine is atheism. The word ‘atheism’ comes from the negative ‘a’ which means ‘no’ and ‘theos’ which means ‘god.’ So, atheism in the simplest terms means ‘no god.’ Basically, atheism is the lack of belief in a god and/or the belief that there is no god. By contrast, theism is the belief that there is a God and that He is knowable. I need to mention that most atheists do not consider themselves anti-theists. Most consider themselves as non-theists.

Many atheists claim that atheism is not a belief system while others say it is. Since there is no official atheist organization, nailing down which definition of atheism to use can be difficult. Here are some definitions offered by atheists.
• “An atheist is someone who believes and/or knows there is no god.”
• “An atheist lacks belief in a god.”
• “An atheist exercises no faith in the concept of god at all.”
• “An atheist is someone who is free from religious oppression and bigotry.”
• “An atheist is someone who is a free-thinker, free from religion and its ideas.”

Whichever definition you go by, atheism denies God.

There are two main categories of atheists: strong and weak, with variations in between. A strong atheist actively believes and states that no God exists. They expressly denounce the Christian God along with any other god. Strong atheists are usually more aggressive in their conversations with theists and try to shoot holes in theistic beliefs. They like to use logic and anti-biblical evidences to denounce God’s existence.

Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell would probably fall into this camp; he wrote:

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. . . . Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

Weak atheists simply exercise no faith in God. The weak atheist might be better explained as a person who lacks belief in God the way a person might lack belief that there is a green lizard in a rocking chair on the moon; it isn’t an issue. He doesn’t believe or not believe it.

We look at the world through certain presuppositions. The atheist has a set of presuppositions, too. Here are some basic principles that atheists, as a whole, tend to adopt. Not all atheists would agree with all of these ideas; the only absolute common one they hold to is that they do not believe in a God or gods.

1. There is no God or devil.
2. There is no supernatural realm.
3. Miracles cannot occur.
4. There is no such thing as sin as a violation of God’s will.
5. Generally, the universe is materialistic and measurable.
6. Man is material.
7. Generally, evolution is considered a scientific fact.
8. Ethics and morals are relative

Obviously, no version of this worldview matches up with any item on our checklist. Atheism rejects everything we discovered in the cosmological, design and moral arguments. But it does not provide adequate explanations for how the universe began, why there is such evidence of design in the universe, or why there is objective morality. Atheists have to rely on ideas like actual infinites in the real world, biological evolution and relativism; but, as we have seen, all of these ideas are seriously flawed.

Atheism isn’t actually a religion, but there is a religion that basically is atheistic. Buddhism doesn’t really rely on the existence of a God. God isn’t necessary in Buddhist philosophy; and, if God does exist, it doesn’t affect anything about Buddhist thought or practice. It is a godless religion.

While the arguments for the existence of God are strong ones, there are many people who have rejected them—even people whom the world considers important and intelligent. Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Francis Crick (one of the discoverers of DNA) and Thomas Edison were all atheists. Isaac Asimov is a respected author, but he doesn’t seem to appreciate any of the arguments for God’s existence. He wrote:

The notion of an eternal universe introduces a great many difficulties, some of them apparently (at least in the present state of our scientific knowledge) insuperable, but scientists are not disturbed by difficulties—those all make up the game. If all the difficulties were gone and all the questions answered, the game of science would be over.

In other words, he is saying that the atheistic worldview doesn’t make sense, but that science would rather keep looking for ways to make it make sense, instead of just accepting the existence of God.

Actually, true atheism is a self-refuting philosophy. There are no “proofs” that God does not exist in atheist circles, especially since you can’t prove a negative regarding God’s existence. Of course, I’m not saying that atheists haven’t tried to offer some proofs that God does not exist, but their “proofs” are always too limited. After all, how do you prove there is no God in the universe? How do you prove that in all places and all times, there is no God? You can’t. If there were a proof of God’s non-existence, then atheists would be continually using it. But we don’t hear of any such commonly held proof supporting atheism or denying God’s existence. The atheist position is very difficult, if not impossible, to prove since it is an attempt to prove a negative. Therefore, since there are no proofs for atheism’s truth and there are no proofs that there is no God, the atheist must hold his position by faith.

There is only one way that atheism is intellectually defensible and that is in the realm of simple possibility. In other words, it may be possible that there is no God; but stating that something is possible doesn’t mean that it is a reality or that it is wise to adopt the position. If I said it is possible that there is an ice cream factory on Jupiter, does that make it intellectually defensible or a position worth adopting merely because it is merely a possibility? So, simply claiming a possibility based on nothing more than it being a possible option, no matter how remote, is not sufficient grounds for atheists to claim viability in their atheism. They must come up with more than “It is possible,” or “There is no evidence for God,” otherwise, there really must be an ice cream factory on Jupiter and the atheist should start defending the position that Jupiter ice cream exists.

Some atheists understand this problem with their worldview, so they don’t claim that God doesn’t exist. At best, atheists can only say that there are no convincing evidences for God so far presented. They cannot say there are no evidences for God because the atheist cannot know all evidences that possibly exist in the world. At best, the atheist can only say that the evidence so far presented has been insufficient. This logically means that there could be evidences presented in the future that will be sufficient. The atheist has to admit that there may indeed be a proof that has so far been undiscovered and that the existence of God is possible. This would make the atheist more of an agnostic. In fact, this view is sometimes known as “strong agnosticism.”

Atheism fails all ten items on our checklist, so we can reject it as a possible way of understanding God. It doesn’t even have a foot to try our glass slipper on. So let’s move on to a related worldview—agnosticism.

The Prayer of a Righteous Man

Daniel 9:1-19

John Owen said that what a Christian is in his private prayer before God, that he is and nothing more; so here we are getting a glimpse of the real Daniel. This prayer, though, was not recorded so that we could merely get to know how godly Daniel really was; it was so that we would be encouraged to follow his example in prayer, which is one of our most important duties as Christians.

James 5:16 says: “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” What we have in Daniel is a righteous man, and James’ point was proven in that this prayer was powerful and effective. In fact, in verse 23, we learn that as soon as Daniel began to pray, his prayer was immediately answered from heaven. So let us look at why Daniel prayed this prayer, and at what we can learn from it.

First, why did Daniel pray this particular prayer? Daniel as we know from previous chapters was a man of constant prayer. He prayed at least three times a day, every day. And he didn’t even interrupt that cycle when praying became a capital offense. But this is not one of his ordinary prayers; this is a special season of prayer, in which he fasts and puts on sackcloth and ashes.

His prayer was motivated by his study of God’s Word, particularly his study of the reading of Jeremiah the prophet. Now at this time, of course, Daniel doesn’t have the Bible as a single book like we do; he just has a collection of scrolls, but he knows that those scrolls are just as much the Word of God as what he was being told in his visions. Daniel regards the prophets as the ambassadors of God—in verse 6, he calls them “your servants the prophets who spoke in your name.” So Daniel knows that every promise in Jeremiah is God’s promise.

And Daniel discovers that God had said in Jeremiah 25 that, because of their continuing idolatry, God was going to crush Jerusalem and send his people into exile in Babylon, but that after 70 years he would punish Babylon. Jeremiah 25:12 says: “But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt,” declares the LORD, “and will make it desolate forever.” 

That had already happened. Daniel is writing in 538 BC, the Persians have just crushed the Babylonians, and the children of Judah have been in exile now for 68 years. But what has Daniel excited is not just the fact that God has crushed Babylon just as he promised; it is his other promise. Jeremiah 29:10-14 says: ¹⁰This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.  ¹¹For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  ¹²Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  ¹³You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  ¹⁴I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Daniel is excited because he knows that God has promised that in just two more years he will return his people from exile. So he sets himself to special prayer to that end. Now it is at this point that some people get confused. Why doesn’t Daniel just take it easy at this point? Doesn’t he believe that God will do what he promised? Yes, Daniel believes that God will do everything he promises. Daniel has already confessed that God is absolutely sovereign over all of his creation. He knows that God’s sovereignty means that everything He ordains will surely come to pass, but Daniel also knows that God uses means in bringing his purposes about.

We know that Christ gave us the guarantee that the Gospel would be “preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Christ is even now bringing that promise to pass but the instrument he uses is not people suddenly understanding the gospel, nor speaking himself from heaven as He spoke to Paul on the Damascus road, nor sending Gabriel and his angels to preach to the nations. Christ is doing it by means of raising up and sending out preachers.

Romans 10:14-15 says: ¹⁴How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  ¹⁵And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.”

Calvinists may expect the elect to be converted without someone preaching to them, but we believe that God uses human instruments. Perhaps the most famous example of this kind of Calvinism was when William Carey called for the Reformed Baptists to send missionaries to India. John Ryland responded by saying, “Sit down, young man. When God decides to save the heathen, He will do it without your help.” Well, by the grace of God, Carey was better than his doctrine, and he knew that God’s call was for us to bring the Gospel message that saves sinners into the entire world. Carey’s motto combined God’s sovereign power with our responsibility: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.”

Even Calvin noted that the promises of God are designed not to make us lazy, but to stimulate the faithful to prayer. Once we know that something is God’s will, that he has promised it, then we should be praying for it, and that is exactly what Daniel was doing.

I think, to a certain extent, we too have forgotten about the power and importance of prayer. Every great advance of the Gospel in the Bible was preceded by prayer. If we ask why we don’t have greater successes in our churches or in our school, the answer is clearly “you do not have, because you do not ask God.” (James 4:2)

So, if we see that prayer is so powerful and important, what can we learn from this prayer of Daniel? We have already learned to let the promises of God be our stimulus and guide in our prayer, but let me suggest 3 others.

First, we can learn to recover a sense of awe and reverence in our prayer. Sinclair Ferguson put it very well when he said, “True prayer always seeks the glory of God.” I hope you see that Daniel’s prayer is intimate, but not falsely intimate. It’s full of genuine emotion, of love and respect and honor, but also deep reverence and awe; it is the language of the prodigal son approaching his father. We come into God’s presence with confidence as his children. But we also need to remember that we are approaching the King of the universe, not just one of our buddies.

Secondly, we can learn the importance of confession in our prayers. It is interesting that Daniel is one of the only characters in the Bible about whom we read nothing negative, no sins, no failings, yet Daniel knew himself to be a sinner, and a sinner who was part of a sinful people. Now perhaps you are thinking. Wait a minute, why should I confess the sins of the church? Because we are part of an ekklesia, God’s people, and there is no dividing the covenant community. That’s our family, and we belong to a family with a lot of sins, a lot of problems.  We need badly to confess our family sins and pray for our reformation and revival and restoration. It doesn’t do us any good to just stand off and throw rocks at the other members of our family. “Your worship is pathetic; your theology is non-existent.” Daniel, who was in better position than any of us to claim the moral high ground, did not do it; because he understood that, in a very real sense, he would be throwing rocks at his own body. We need instead to know ourselves as part of that wider community and confess all of our sins in humility instead of merely complaining about someone else’s. Daniel did not say, “They didn’t listen to you”; he said, “We didn’t listen to you.”

Thirdly, let us plead with God, via his mercy!

Daniel 9:18 says: ¹⁸Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. 

What can we go to God with, what can we plead? What merits do we have? Here was Israel’s most righteous representative saying he had nothing to bring, no merits. That has been the universal declaration of all the humblest and holiest of saints, that without the mercy of God given through Jesus, without His cleansing blood and righteousness, we have no hope.

 

Filipino English

One thing that always amazes me is the Filipino use of the thesaurus. That’s the only way I can envision them coming up with sentences filled with the grandest English vocabulary. Witness this proclamation from the judge in the just-completed Subic Bay Marine rape case: The rapist will go to prison for 40 years, in order “to protect women against the unbridled bestiality of persons who cannot control their libidinous proclivity.” Well, who wouldn’t want to restrict libidinous proclivity?