Ancient Prophecy That Predicted World Empires - SC2537

SPEAKER 1 Welcome to Science Conversations. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Is there such a thing as an intervening God? Joining me to discuss part one of this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again to the program, Dr. John. SPEAKER 2 Hello Kaysie. SPEAKER 1 Dr. John Ashton has written a book entitled Evolution Impossible: 12 Reasons why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. And we'll be referring to chapter 13 as part of this. Program. So first and foremost, John, I am wondering why are we talking about evidence for an intervening God in the midst of a conversation, a long conversation and discussion about scientific evidence against evolution? SPEAKER 2 Right, because there's really no explanation for the origin of life on Earth that fits some naturalistic process. So there must, life on Earth must be supernatural in terms of, as we look at the science that we understand today, the biochemistry, the chemistry, the physics and so forth, it's absolutely impossible for us to have formed by natural processes that we know, the chemistry. So while we have the theory of evolution was put up by Darwin, and of course, you know, many people pushed that and saw that this was an escape or, you know, an alternative to the Christian position, for example, of creation. It's recorded in the Bible and the Jewish tradition there recorded in the Bible. It explains our origin via a supernatural creator. And so science and many people didn't want to go down that route. They didn't want They wanted God out of the picture. But we now know that that's not going to work. We have overwhelming evidence that we've been discussing, that it's absolutely impossible for natural processes to produce life anywhere in the universe. And when we look at the universe itself, we really don't have an explanation for that. We've explained how the Big Bang theory currently, as it is, just doesn't fit the observations that we make. There's so many inconsistencies. and other theories that people are putting up. We don't have a coherent theory that can explain the structures in the universe that we observe. And so it's very important. But a number of, you know, again, top minds have recognized that everything points to a supernatural intelligence creating us. And so that there is a supernatural realm that this space-time system that we're in is one space-time system. But the Bible points to, and also evidence down through history points to, that there is another space-time system and that there are other beings as well, that there are other minds that are involved here. And so this is very important, I think, that we look at, and I think to look at the evidence for this. So a lot of people for example, who say, oh, well, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God in that. Probably most of those people haven't considered the evidence that we have for the existence of some supernatural realm and in particular a supernatural creator God. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. And I guess with science, if you're taking a fair approach in science, you would be looking at all possible options and alternatives and explanations in order to try to arrive at the correct conclusion. So I guess this then is putting forward the idea of supernatural and that there is actually evidence for that that we can look at that might inform the overall perspective on what we conclude about the origin of life and the universe and all of those questions. Yeah, that's pretty much the position we're coming from here. SPEAKER 2 That's right, exactly. SPEAKER 1 Okay, very good, very interesting. What kind of evidence would you put forward, I guess, at the forefront for a super intelligent guiding in the affairs of this world, humanity, et cetera? SPEAKER 2 Okay, well, the Bible account that has been preserved, of course, is the book that's composed of smaller books or writings by a large number of authors. And these have been collected over the time. These were people who claimed to have experiences with God, and they wrote those down. Now, one of those authors was a man by the name of Isaiah, and he had quite a very strong interaction with God. And he said one of the things that God explained to him was that he would prove that, well, that God would demonstrate that he was God is that he would reveal the future. And Isaiah, of course, wrote a number of prophecies that related to the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, and also the coming of different individuals and certain historical events that would happen, such as the rule of Cyrus and so forth, many years before that occurred. Now, one of the most perhaps clearest prophecies that the Bible has recorded is that in the Book of Daniel. So these are the writings of a man, Daniel. Daniel was a young Hebrew captive Well, let's go back a bit. If we go back and look at the history as we have it, we have Egyptian history very early on and the different Egyptian empires, and then we have other smaller empires that come after that, the Assyrian Empire and so forth. But around about 600 BC, we begin to have much stronger records that are preserved, clearer records that are preserved, so we have a pretty good take on history from around 600 BC. Once we go a bit early in that, maybe we can stretch it back to the Assyrian Empire 700 BC. But from that period on, we have pretty good historical records that have been preserved for us and have been studied. So we know what happened in terms of history, particularly in that area around Mesopotamia. that part there of the world where these empires tended to be centered at that time. And there was a ruler, Nebuchadnezzar. He's famous for building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon that were listed as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I think that was by Herodotus. Put that list together. And he established the Babylonian Empire. Now, he conquered Jerusalem. He conquered Israel. captured Jerusalem, took the contents of the temple and so forth back to Babylon. And he also took the very learned, the princes from Babylon, from Jerusalem back to Babylon. And he picked out the elite to become, to be trained in his schools to become advisors. So it's a very clever man. He looked at the wisdom from many counselors. And Daniel was one of those young men. Now, a very interesting event occurs in that Nebuchadnezzar apparently had this dream, a very vivid dream that really stood out in his mind. But when he woke up in the morning, he couldn't remember it. And he called his advisors in, his top sages who claimed to be able to interpret dreams and all this sort of thing, and said, you need to tell me what this dream meant. And they said, sure. just tell us the dream. And he said, well, I can't remember the dream. And they said, well, unless you tell us the dream, we can't interpret it for you. And he said, well, you claim to be able to do this. If you really can do this, you should be able to tell me what the dream was as well. And of course, that really frustrated the guys. And they said, well, nobody can ask that. Nobody knows that, you know, except the God sort of thing. So Nebuchadnezzar issued a death decree. And they came up with the answer. they would all be put to death. 'Cause he could see through a very clever man, he could see through them. You know, I've got a bunch of charlatans here sort of thing. But Daniel was in the group that would have been executed, and he and some of his friends, they prayed to God, God, please reveal to us what the dream was. And that, and Daniel himself then had a vision of what the dream was. And he then approached the king, and said, King, I can tell you what the dream was. And he told the king the dream. And the king said, Yes, that's it. What does it mean? And it was quite a spectacular dream. So Nebuchadnezzar dreamt of a giant statue of a man, and in this statue the head was of gold, the chest was of silver, the belly was of bronze, and the legs were of iron. But the feet were of iron and clay, a mixture of iron and clay mixed together, the feet. And then he, in the dream, this rock came and smashed the statue on its feet, smashed everything together and the whole statue just collapsed and disappeared. And the rock then became, they grew and just became like the whole world. So it was quite a spectacular dream. You can imagine why he had an ordinary dream. Why he wanted to know what it was about. and so Nebuchadnezzar was quite fascinated and said, well, what does it mean? And Daniel said that, okay, Nebuchadnezzar, your kingdom is represented by the head of gold, but you're gonna be followed by a kingdom that's not quite as good, it's inferior, silver is inferior to gold, and then you're gonna be followed by another kingdom represented by bronze, and then you're gonna be followed by another kingdom that's gonna be really strong like iron and break the pieces like iron does. But then in the latter days, that kingdom is going to deteriorate and break up into a number of kingdoms, some of which will be really strong and some of which will be weak. They'll try to unite through marriage, but that will fail, and then God will destroy all those kingdoms and replace it with His kingdom. So it's quite a spectacular dream, really. And the fascinating thing, of course, is that that's exactly what happened down through history. Now, we know that Daniel records that Nebuchadnezzar had this dream in the second year of his reign, which was 603 BC. So we know this is about 600 BC. And we know that Babylon, of course, was conquered by Gobius, the, the, Mede general with Cyrus. There was a unification of the Medes and the Persians and they conquered 539 BC, captured Babylon, a famous battle there where Gobius marched his troops, diverted the river Euphrates, which was their war supply, marched his troops under the wall during a special religious high day when they were all partying. and essentially took the city without battle. And so that established the Persian Empire through there, which would be represented by the silver. And then of course we know that Darius III was defeated by Alexander the Great, I think it was 331 BC. And we have then the Greek Empire, which would be represented by the bronze. part of the statue. And then, of course, the Roman Empire gradually conquered the Greek Empire from about, I don't know, 168 BC through to about 30 BC, eventually Rome conquered Egypt, the last of the Greek occupied areas. And so, and that became the two legs. And it's interesting, of course, Rome split into the Eastern and Western Empires. the two legs. And of course, then the Roman Empire disintegrated into the states of Europe there. And we know that, and one of the fascinating things, of course, is that the prophecy predicted that they would never be united, that Europe would never be united again. And of course, Charlemagne, yeah, Charlemagne tried and Napoleon and Hitler. And of course, we had the European Union. But again, they couldn't get everybody to agree. So that's, you know, it's quite, quite interesting that that has stood the, the time down through there. There are a lot, of course, a lot of people say, well, Daniel must have written his book after, you know, or it must be a forgery. Somebody by the name of Daniel has written this. Yeah. How could it be so accurate and predict? But one of the things is, I think it's Xenophon that talks about how when Alexander the Great conquered Jerusalem, it's quite interesting. Alexander didn't attack Jerusalem, and there's a story behind that as well. But the account goes that when Alexander the Great came into Jerusalem, the high priest showed him the Book of Daniel that they had at that time and how it was predicted that Greece would become the world power. And they say as a result of that, Alexander felt very jocular with them. So we know then that it goes back at, you know, at least that far. And there are other prophecies in Daniel, of course, that extend past the time of Christ as well that we could talk about. But essentially what this is saying, this is pretty powerful evidence of a supernatural mind overseeing history. And it's interesting, Herbert Butterfield, who was professor of history at Cambridge in the early 50s, he wrote a book on history and Christianity, something like that was called, and showed that there was powerful evidence that God seemed to regulate history, that there was a supernatural power regulating history for good on the side of good, which is quite fascinating. So to me, this is just one simple example, and there are many in the Bible, hundreds of prophecies in the Bible that have come true, very accurate prophecies that confirm, yes, there must be a supernatural mind that's outside space and time. Yes, we know it. SPEAKER 1 And that's intervening and overruling. Fascinating. Very, very compelling evidence to think about in this discussion. Next time we're going to continue to examine the question, is there such a thing as an intervening God? So stay tuned and be sure to join us.