Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

July 3, 2022

Scripture Reading: Daniel 2:16-19

16) “Then Daniel went in, and desired of the king that he would give him time, and that he would shew the king the interpretation.

17) Then Daniel went to his house, and made the thing known to Havaniah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions:

18) That they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

19) Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision.  Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.”

What was this secret that was revealed by the God of heaven to Daniel that saved his life and all the wise men of Babylon?   Prior to this secret being revealed, Daniel and his three companions from Judah asked their LORD for the meaning of an unknown dream that King Nebuchadnezzar had the previous night.  The king had just asked his wise men to tell him the meaning of his dream; he kept what happened in the dream a secret. 

How could anyone do this?  Suppose I said to you that I had a dream last night.  I wanted someone to tell me what the meaning of my dream was.  The first question one would ask would be, “Give us the details of what you dreamed; then we will come up with a meaning.” 

That way at least the person would have a slight chance of getting the answer correct.  But that wasn’t the way that it was…you had to tell, not only what occurred in my dream, but you had to give me the meaning of it.  And the penalty, if you couldn’t, was death.  It was certainly a gloomy time in the wise men’s dorms…death was apparent.

Now, who was Daniel?   Jeremiah the prophet had warned the House of Judah that if they didn’t follow the commandments of their LORD their God, that they would follow in the footsteps of the House of Israel.  They would be taken captive and removed from the Promised Land just like what had happened to the larger part of the kingdom over 120 years previously. 

The Assyrian army had taken the House of Israel along with most of the House of Judah captive.  Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel and later Judah only remained.  A mighty miracle of God saved them from destruction and captivity.  God had mercy on the House of Judah, as He destroyed the most powerful army in the world at that time—the Assyrian army.

BIBLICAL EVENTS BETWEEN 588-609 BC

609 Death of King Josiah

609-598 Reign of King Jehoiakim (succeeded King Jehoahaz, who replaced King Josiah but reigned only 3 months).  Began giving tribute to Nebuchadnezzar in 605.  First deportation purportedly included Daniel.

598-597 Reign of King Jehoiachin (reigned 3 months).  Siege and fall of Jerusalem.  Second deportation.

597 Zedekiah made King of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon

594 Anti-Babylon conspiracy

588 Siege and fall of Jerusalem.  Solomon’s Temple destroyed. Third deportation.

But Judah failed in keeping God’s laws, so, in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem and besieged it.  But it wasn’t Nebuchadnezzar’s great power that granted the victory over Jehoiakim, but God gave Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the power to destroy His people--the House of Judah.  Over 7/8 of the once powerful nation of Israel had already been taken in captivity by Syria and Assyria.

But Nebuchadnezzar did something else, besides the usual plundering of the land and taking of the vessels and the valuable materials of the house of God.  The king asked his master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the top young Israelites to help rule in his government.  There were eight qualifications that the king demanded for gathering these teenage students:

•   They must be princes.
•   They must be teenagers.
•   They must be without any physical blemish.
•   They must be handsome.
•   They must be well educated and skillful in       wisdom.
•   They must be skillful in knowledge.
•   They must be proficient in science.
•   They must be refined and polished to be able    to stand before kings.

The top teenage royalty in Judah would be brought to Babylon and trained in their university for rulership in their government.  Daniel was about 15 years old when he was chosen to be one of these top foreign students who would attend college in Babylon.  He was royalty, descended from the “seed of David.”  He fit all the eight characteristics.  Daniel and a few of his royal companions from Judah were chosen to learn the language, culture and literature of the Babylonians.

And they were all assigned new names.  They were removed from the roots of their former nation and God.  They were given the names of the gods of Babylon:  Belteshazzar, was the name that was given to Daniel, along with his three companions; Shadrach was the new name for Hananiah, Meshach was substituted for Mishael, and the new Babylonian name was Abednego for Azariah.

In addition, the king appointed a special diet for these captured teenagers as they studied for three years before they began their role in ruling Babylon.  It was what we would call “brainwashing” today, as well as “peer-pressure.”  The students would eat the same diet as the king of Babylon did. 

But Daniel set his mind not to do this.  He refused to eat any foods that were called “unclean” by His LORD God.  Daniel and his three companions were not influenced by “peer-pressure” as most teenagers are; they asked the prince of the eunuchs for a substitute menu.

Think about it for one minute.  Daniel is removed far from Jerusalem.  His royalty has ended in Judah, for many of the royal seed have been killed or captured.  They are removed from their families.  And unknown to Daniel was that Jeremiah was transferring the “seed of David” to rule over the divorced House of Israel.  But that is another sermon for another day.

Apply this to yourself.  If you were brought up in this message and when you left home to be on your own, what was your diet?  Did you eat those animals and plant life that our God said not to eat?   Daniel didn’t.

Daniel was chosen to become part of the government of Babylon.  He and the other captive princes were to eat of the food of the king.  If young Daniel went along with the new diet, things would go smoothly; but if he didn’t eat the Babylonian diet, there would be some major problems. 

NEBUCHADNEZZAR

The ruler of Babylon was King Nebuchadnezzar.  He was an absolute dictator.   He was one of the most powerful rulers at any time in history.  His empire brought together people of all different nations and religions.

In 598 BC, Nebuchadnezzar campaigned against the Kingdom of Judah, succeeding in capturing the city of Jerusalem.  Judah represented a prime target of Babylonian attention given that it was at the epicenter of competition between Babylon and Egypt. 

King Jehoiakim had died during Nebuchadnezzar’s siege and had been replaced by his son, Jeconiah, who was captured and taken to Babylon. His uncle, Zedekiah, was installed in his place as king of Judah.  Jeconiah was still alive in Babylonia but was a disabled prisoner.

In Zedekiah’s fourth year as king of Judah, the kings of Ammon, Edom, Moab, Sidon and Tyre met in Jerusalem to deal with the possibility of throwing off Babylonian control.   Zedekiah, since the time of his appointment as king, waited for the opportunity to throw off Babylonian control.  The failure of Babylon to invade Egypt in 601 BC helped inspire revolts against the Babylonian Empire.  The outcome of these efforts was Zedekiah’s open revolt against Nebuchadnezzar’s authority and resulted in the fall of Judah.

In 589 BC, Zedekiah refused to pay tribute to Nebuchadnezzar.  In response to Zedekiah’s uprising, Nebuchadnezzar conquered and destroyed the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BC, one of the great achievements of his reign. The campaign, which probably ended in the summer of 586 BC, resulted in the plunder and destruction of the city of Jerusalem, a permanent end to Judah, and it led to the Babylonian captivity, as the Hebrews were captured and deported to Babylonia.  It is possible that the intensity of the destruction carried out by Nebuchadnezzar at Jerusalem was due to the implementation of something akin to a scorched earth-policy, aimed at stopping Egypt from gaining a foothold there.

King Zedekiah attempted to flee after resisting the Babylonians but was captured at Jericho and suffered a terrible fate.  Nebuchadnezzar wanted to make an example out of him given that Zedekiah was not an ordinary vassal, but a vassal directly appointed by Nebuchadnezzar. As such, Zedekiah was supposedly taken to Riblah in northern Syria, where he had to watch his sons being executed before having his eyes gouged out and sent to be imprisoned in Babylon.

King Zedekiah was in Babylon while Daniel was ruling there.  But there is no mention of any intervention between the two.

But Daniel made up his mind to not defile himself:

Daniel 1:8 “Now Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank:  therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.”

But Daniel didn’t just complain out loud that he wasn’t going to eat any of this vile, unclean food. He understood that his actions would cost the lives of several Babylonians who were in authority over him. But he devised a plan. 

And he revealed this proposition to the head eunuch that was over the food distribution of the students.  The head eunuch replied exactly what you thought he would reply.  “Everyone else is going to eat this food that the king requested, why are you not going to eat these delicious entrees?  And if you don’t eat these required meals you will make me forfeit my life!”

Daniel answered that he and his three companions could be tested after ten days.  They would eat only vegetables and drink only water; no meats and wine.  These four teenagers would eat only vegetables and drink only water!  That is something.  Four teenagers agreed to eat this diet instead of the king’s meals.  How dedicated they were to obey their LORD and God!  They were willing to stand alone; instead of going along with the crowd.  They would obey their LORD no matter what.

After ten days, Daniel instructed the head eunuch to compare the four Hebrew students with the other foreign students who ate the king’s edibles; determine which of the two groups looked the best. 

And if Daniel’s group succeeded, then the Babylonian in charge of feeding the foreign students would have his life spared. If Daniel’s group looked worse than the others…I don’t know what would have happened.  But they wouldn’t be given food to eat that would have been free from any restrictions of their God.

Daniel was not obnoxious, but he was uncompromising.  At the end of ten days their countenances appeared much fairer and fatter in the flesh that all the rest of students which did eat the portion that the king had commanded.  With the life of the head eunuch now not on the line, the captain then granted that Daniel and his three companions were permitted to eat the foods that were not restricted by their God.  They had passed the test.

That was the first test that these four royal seed liners faced in the land of their captivity.  And these four Hebrew teenagers passed with flying colors.   They had followed the laws of their God and not the laws of the foreign land that they were captive in.

All four graduated at the top of their class.  In fact, they were 10 times better than the other students.

At the end of the three years, they were to be part of the government of Babylon.  But now we come back to the story where we began.  King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream.  The king realized that it was an important dream, but he didn’t know what it meant.  So, he put out this challenge to the wise men of his government—interpret his dream without being told what it was.

This challenge dumbfounded all his wise men.  None of them could answer his dream.  Especially since they were not informed about what the dream was about.  He told them nothing about his dream … he wanted them to tell him what he had dreamed and give the meaning of it.  If they couldn’t, they would be killed.  And the word went out that all the wise men of Babylon, both native and foreign, were to be executed if no one could tell the king what he had dreamed and what it meant.  The king was an arrogant supreme king and the death of all his wise men was certain.

So, let’s put this in personal terms.  Suppose we were Daniel.  We were captured by a foreign power.  We were taken to their university and given another name.  We refused to eat their unclean food and are given a ten-day test of just eating vegetables and drinking water.  But we won.

Then, all this happens.  We, along with the rest of the students, are to be executed because we could not tell what the king had dreamt and what the dream meant.  How unfair is this?   Who would require such a thing?  We were being put to death over this!  What would you do? 

We would probably whine and complain.  We would have a self-pity party.  We would probably have a protest meeting.  That’s what we probably would do?  But it wouldn’t do us any good.

Daniel didn’t even know why he was going to be taken to the gallows.  When he was told, he told the king’s captain, “Why is the decree so hasty from the king?” 

Daniel 2:16-19:

16) “Then Daniel went in, and desired of the king that he would give him time, and that he would shew the king the interpretation.

17) Then Daniel went to his house, and made the thing known to Havaniah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions:

18) That they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

19) Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision.  Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.”

What did Daniel do?  He went to the house of the king and asked for a little bit more time and then he would show the king the interpretation of his dream.  Now, Daniel didn’t know the interpretation of the dream at this time, but he had confidence that he would be told the meaning.  After convincing the king not to be so hasty, he went to his three loyal Hebrew companions and all four of them prayed to the only one who could come up with the answer of the mystery of the king’s dream—their LORD God. 

Then, was the secret revealed in a night vision unto Daniel.  But that wasn’t all that happened.  Daniel had to do something else.  He blessed the God of heaven for revealing the dream and its meaning to him.  Only our God could do such a thing.  Only our God had the wisdom to tell what a person had dreamed and the meaning of the vision.

Then Daniel went to the man in charge of executing all the wise men and told him to not kill anyone until he saw King Nebuchadnezzar.  For he would tell the king the interpretation of his vision.  Then Arioch, the man the king had ordered to destroy the wise men of Babylon, brought Daniel, the Hebrew student, to the king.  Daniel told the king that the secret which the king had demanded the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers; all who failed in showing the meaning to the king. Daniel tells the king that there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets and makes known to the king the secret of his dream. 

Here is what my LORD God told me [Daniel].  He informed me what you had dreamed and told me what it meant.  What a prophetic dream!

Thou, O King, saw and beheld a great image:

1.  The head was made of fine gold,

2.  The breast and arms were made of silver,

3.  The belly was bronze,

4.  The legs were made of iron,

5.  The feet were made of part of iron and part of clay.

6.  Then a rock fell on the feet of the image, and the stone that fell on the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

The meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream:

• The gold head represented Babylon; Nebuchadnezzar was the king,
• Silver chest and arms represented Medo-Persia,
• Belly of bronze represented Greece,
• Legs of iron represented the Roman Empire,
• Feet of iron and clay represented the mongrel   governments of the end days,
• The stone represented the everlasting kingdom of God.

Daniel had a good attitude.  He wasn’t suspicious; he had an excellent spirit.  Daniel was too good; too pure.  For that reason, his co-workers, even though he had saved their lives, became jealous of him.  They looked to find a fault against him. 

Daniel 6:4-5

4) “Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.

5) Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.” 

They searched and probed and couldn’t find any flaw in Daniel.  Daniel was made by the king as the head of all the wise men.  He became one of the top government officials in the land.  Daniel was a man of integrity.  And the king recognized it.

I wonder how that compares to our President.  Is our President a man of integrity?  How does he compare to Daniel?  Is our President a good leader?  Is he a good father?

BIDEN’S LIFE STORY

Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia, had three children: Hunter, Beau and Naomi.  In 1972, his wife Neilia and daughter Naomi, tragically died in a car accident.  Hunter and Beau, his two sons, were critically injured in the accident but survived.  Joe was not in the car, but he became a single father; raising two boys. 

After Joe became a widower, he eventually married a woman whose name was Jill.  Most people don’t know that Joe already knew Jill while he had been married.  Why?  Because she was the family’s babysitter when she was a young teenager.  This is contested by many that say this is not true, but here is a picture posted by Jill herself.  Jill’s ex-husband (first marriage) accuses her, in his biography, of her having an affair with Joe when she was married to him.

After Joe and Jill married, they had a daughter named Ashley, who lives “a quiet life” and is frequently in and out of rehab for various substance abuse and sexual issues.   She has accused her father, Joe, of sexual advances in her diary, which has been made off limits.  Ashley left the diary in a rehab bedroom which was found by the next client underneath her bed.  She sold it to a company, Project Veritas, and consequently the execs of this company had their homes searched by the FBI.  The diary tells of Ashley’s sexual and abusive addictions which she says were caused by her father who showered with her “inappropriately”.  So, Biden then uses the FBI as his private police to search the home of the men whose company bought his daughter’s diary.  He should resign as President.

Biden has been charged with raping several women.  And he is known as the old man who gropes young girls and does weird things with them.  And nothing bad happens to him in court, in fact, it very seldom goes to court.

But Joe’s son, Hunter, is worse than his father.  He was dismissed from the Army for drug use.  Sadly, the most normal of the three children, who were not killed in the car wreck, Beau, died in 2015 from a brain tumor.  He had been married to Hallie and they had two children, Robert and Natalie, who were still in school when their father died.

After Beau’s death, Hunter Biden, in 2015, to try and “comfort” his brother’s widow, Hallie, he started having sexual relations with her. But this was while he was still married to Kathleen who had been his bride for over twelve years!

Hunter carries on this secret affair with Hallie until he was exposed in 2017.  But when the truth was revealed, his father, Joe Biden, issued a statement giving his blessing to the couple (in 2017).  Hunter’s wife, Kathleen, files divorce papers and ultimately gets divorced from Hunter in 2017.  Think about it:  The President of the United States blessed Hunter for having a sexual relationship with his dead brother’s wife while this same son was married to his own wife for over 12 years!

That is bad enough, but there is a lot more.  After his divorce, Hunter starts having sexual relations with a stripper, Lunden Roberts, while living in the same house with Beau’s widow. 

He also began exchanging sexual text messages with Hallie’s then-married sister, Elizabeth Secundy, around the same time.  Elizabeth told Hunter that she loved him in the texts that she sent to him.  She eventually separated from her husband and father of three children in 2015 after 15 years of marriage.  Their divorce was finalized in 2018.  That was also the year that Hallie, Beau’s widow, kicked Hunter out of her house after she found out about his involvement with the stripper.  He got the stripper pregnant.

Hunter denied that the stripper’s baby was his, although a paternity test proves otherwise.   She sued him and then eventually settled the paternity issues in court in March of 2020.

In between the birth of the stripper’s baby and the settlement of his child support, Hunter married another woman in 2019 after knowing her for only six days.  They now have a son together, named Beau.  His new wife’s name is Melissa Cohen.  She is a devout Jewish divorcee who grew up in South Africa who now lives in Los Angeles, California.  She co-owns the company Tribal Worlds and is very anti-Trump.  She is pro-LGBTQ+ and attends many of their functions. 

Criminal “double minded” Joe, like Trump, has children who are married to the murderers of our Savior.  They (the Jews) hate both Jesus the Christ and His followers.  As Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, said about these enemies of Jesus the Christ and Christians, they are a “bitter, poisonous enemy” who “in secret they curse us.”

Then comes Hunter’s “laptop from hell”, loaded with emails, text messages, photos, child pornography, videos, and other sordid digital images of drug use and rampant weirdness.  Hunter Biden dropped the laptop off in Delaware, his home state, to get it repaired.  It seems he dropped it in some water while in a meth-induced state of mind.  He then neglected to pay the $85.00 repair fee and after the proper length of time the laptop became the repair shop owner’s property for non-payment.

When the owner saw what was on it, he was so disturbed that he contacted the FBI.  No response. The DOJ?  No response.

Eventually, it landed in Rudy Giuliani’s possession and he turned it over to the Delaware State Police after making four copies of the hard drive.  As it turns out, there’s quite a lot of child pornography on there, much of it involving youngsters on Hunter’s many trips to China. The Chinese Communist Party uses this as a blackmail tactic.

They supply the young girls, they film you, unknowingly, and then they can keep you “in line”, while paying you the big dollars to  do their bidding, like lucrative deals with your Vice President father; now President father.

Millions of dollars were paid to Hunter Biden for favors with the United States government while Joe Biden was Vice President under Obama.  For eight years Hunter made the contacts and split the money with his father, referred to as the “Big Guy” in all emails detailing how their ill-gotten gains would be split up among all the criminals involved.

Joe Biden “inadvertently” financed his son Hunter’s sexual relationships with a Russia-linked escort ring, according to a report Monday (6/27/2022).  President Biden wired his 52-year-old son $100,000 to help him pay bills from December 2018 through January 2019, the Washington Examiner reported, citing records from a laptop Hunter Biden left behind at a computer repair shop in Delaware.  Hunter Biden, meanwhile, had spent more than $30,000 on sex workers between November 2018 and March 2019, records show — including many linked to Russia-based email addresses and connected to an “exclusive model agency” called UberGFE, the outlet reported.

Joe Biden sold out his country and used his meth head son to do it.  During the presidential campaign he denied that the found computer was his son’s; he blamed it on “Russian disinformation.”  Biden is as dirty and crooked as they come.  He is a lying, crooked, thief who showered with his own daughter inappropriately, committed a quid quo pro with the Ukraine government, had relations with all kind of different women and girls, and his son is now married to a person who calls the Virgin Mary a whore…may he rest with his crimes as he approaches death.

Now contrast this with the unblemished record of Daniel.  Have a happy 4th of July!

Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.