Daniel: please explain
 
 



The first three songs on White-fella Dreaming are concerned with the Law of Moses – the first five books of the bible.


We now move onto the books of the Prophets, who interpreted that Law of Moses, often in a different way to that of the people who ran the church in their day.


The prophets had a problem.


King David had been told by God that one of his descendants would reign in Jerusalem forever. (You can read about that in 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Chronicles 17)


So it seemed a pretty good bet that Jerusalem would never be conquered by any other country.


The problem the prophets had to deal with was that Jerusalem was invaded and defeated by Babylon on three separate occasions. The third time around, they destroyed the place and left it desolate.


So much for God’s promise to David.


So how could the people of Israel trust anything their Law said about the promises to Abraham, Moses and David?


Some of the prophets prophesied before the destruction of Jerusalem, some after.


But their message was the same.


As Moses had prophesied in the book of Deuteronomy (chapters 28-32), the people of Israel would reject God’s Laws and carry on just like everyone else


God would seek to turn them around, make them a holy, sanctified people by allowing other nations to defeat them. But this would be as a form of atonement. He would never break the promises he made to Abraham.


That was the message the prophets had to deliver.


They prophesied a terrible time of tribulation for Israel. It would be worse than what Babylon had perpetrated.


But just when it seemed that Israel would be destroyed, God would intervene in human history by sending a Messiah to save the Jews in Jerusalem and establish a kingdom of heaven on earth.


That was the message the prophets had to pass on to the people of Israel. The great tribulation of Israel (atonement) and the Day of the Lord, when a messiah would rescue them from destruction (redemption).


 
The king awoke in a terrible state from a vision of the night
Said, “Tell me my dream and tell me what it means and you can keep your life”





Daniel said, “You dreamed O King, of a man with golden head
Shoulders of silver, torso of bronze and he stood on iron legs
And a stone not made of human hand rolled that statue all away
‘Cause the feet that statue stood upon were made of iron mixed with clay”

Seventy weeks of seven years 
Take away transgression tears
Your deeds atone and right enthrone
And seal up all the visions to the prophets have been shown


The head that’s the lion of Babylon, The shoulders, Persian bear
The torso is the leopard, heading east from its Aegean lair
The legs the Trojan refugees ensconced in Roman soil
Their horse remade with iron jaws the nations to despoil
And the Babylonian harlot she’s heading westward for the feast
She’ll drink the blood of nations as she nestles in that beast

Seventy weeks of seven years 
Take away transgression tears
Your deeds atone and right enthrone
And seal up all the visions to the prophets have been shown


Seven weeks of seven til the temple rises on the hill that Zion climbs
And walls and streets and trenches will be built in troubled times
Then sixty-two weeks til the chosen one will be cut off in his prime
And the iron beast will destroy my cityh
Without reason and without rhyme
And my chosen ones will be forced to flee to what refuge they can find
To famine, war and pestilence til they return in my own time

Seventy weeks of seven years 
Take away transgression tears
Your deeds atone and right enthrone
And seal up all the visions to the prophets have been shown


Daniel: The Atonement and Redemption of Israel