Copyright © 2002 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
The theory of evolution owes its existence to Christianity. Without the view of history which Christianity gave us, Darwin could never have conceived his theory. The ancient pagan world, both in Greece and in Asia, saw change and history as cycles. The world existed eternally, with events repeating themselves in the way the seasons return year after year. For Aristotle, all species of life were eternal. Every kind of creature exists forever in a cycle of life and death. History is the story of an eternal circle forever turning round the same series of events. Life and civilizations arise, decline, fall and return, over and over.
Darwin’s theory, however, required a view of history in which events move forward, in a line. There had to be a beginning and an end. Species come into existence and they go out of existence, replaced by stronger, fitter species more able to survive. At least up to the present time, evolution is a story of progress, of changes moving ever onward toward the end product of you and I, creatures with intelligence enough to understand the process. What many Darwinians may not understand is that their theory rests on a concept of history which comes from the Bible.
As we see here in Daniel 12, the Bible’s image of history is not like that of other ancient people. As you read the Old Testament’s story of the Jewish people you do not get the feeling of a cycle. It is a narrative with direction. It has a beginning. We move in a line from Adam and Eve to Noah to Abraham and Sarah. Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Miriam. Then come the judges like Deborah and Gideon, then the great kings of Israel, Saul, David, Solomon. Even when, as Daniel experienced, Jerusalem is destroyed by the Babylonians, you do not get the feeling that this is just the beginning of another cycle. Jewish civilization will not rise in the same way, just to fall again, repeating the cycle.
No, the Bible’s picture is of history moving from its beginning in God’s creation toward an end which is also the work of God. Here in the closing chapter of Daniel we get the most explicit description in the Old Testament of history moving toward something new and final. Verse 1 starts out by predicting a “time of distress such has not happened from the beginning of nations until then.” This is no prediction that a cycle will repeat itself, but that something new will happen.
Then in verses 2 and 3 we catch a glimpse of the ultimate end God has planned for history. He is going to raise everyone from the dead; send some to an eternal punishment and bring some into everlasting glory and joy. History has a beginning and it has an end. And everything that falls in between is God’s providence, moving us toward His goal.
In the 5 previous chapters of Daniel, he was given visions which detailed events for the next few hundred years after his life. Depending on one’s interpretation, he saw the rise of the Persians, their conquest by Greece under Alexander the Great, and the division of Alexander’s kingdom by his four generals. He also saw the affliction of the Jewish people in the time between the testaments, in particular the blasphemies of Antiochus Epiphanes. Some interpreters believe that Daniel was also given a glimpse of the Roman Empire.
We are to understand that God has known about and worked through all these events. As chaotic and random as world history appears, it has a purpose. That purpose is revealed here to Daniel in the mention of the angel Michael protecting his people. As we read from Romans 8 at the beginning of last month, God is directing it all for the good of those who love Him.
This is where the other texts for today come in. In Psalm 80 and Matthew 21, God’s work in history is compared to the tending of a vineyard. Ask Jon Ekstrom about all the care he has lavished on the vineyard he’s planted behind their home. He cleared and prepared the ground. He brought in and planted the vines. He set up a watering system. He covered the vines with nets against the birds. That plot of ground is being nurtured for the single special purpose of making wine. The psalm reminds us that God cares for and nurtures His people in the same way. It asks for Him to come and restore what has been destroyed. In Matthew, Jesus said the time had come for God to do just that. In Jesus, God would redeem and restore the vines He had been nurturing all along. Just as God promised Daniel, He would save His people and judge the wicked.
However, the last chapter of Daniel reminds us of what our salvation really is. God is not leading history toward the rise of great nations or prosperous economies. You see, both Jews and Christians have been apt to misunderstand our own view of history. Once we get hold of the fact that God is providentially working in it all to bring it to a good end, we go on to suppose that means we will be able to see that end arriving in the world.
For Jews that meant they expected God to accomplish His purpose by delivering from their enemies. They thought God was done when He got the Persians to release them to go home to Jerusalem. Then they imagined God had finished when Judas Maccabeus and his brothers rebelled and freed Judea from Antiochus Epiphanes. And in Jesus’ time they thought that God would complete His plan by getting rid of the Romans.
But the angel who talks to Daniel here tells him that the story is to be sealed up. Just how God will wrap up history is not to be completely revealed. It is not going to be in any of the events that people then or people now hope for. As verse 10 says, “Many will be purified,” many people will trust God and be redeemed and made righteous, “but the wicked will continue to be wicked.” The events of history are going to continue to be a story of good battling evil, of courage and cowardice, of peace and violence. Just as in the parable of the vineyard, world history will be a mixed bag of progress and decay.
In the last verse of Daniel he is told that he will rest and then rise to his inheritance. In other words he will die and wait for the resurrection of the dead. In God’s plan for history our hope is not that God to save us from death. Our hope is to be raised from the dead.
You see, history does not have its end in the world, but out of it. God is bringing events toward a completion that will lift us out of the sequence of civilization and war and progress on earth. God intends for His people to “shine like the brightness of the heavens… and like the stars forever.”
Which all means that working out of history on earth may not be quite what we expect God to be doing. On August 24, 410 A.D., a barbarian general name Alaric led his army of Goths into Rome and looted the city for three days. This was at precisely the time when Rome was finally becoming thoroughly Christian. So the Roman people wrestled with August 24 the way we wrestle with September 11. Why would God let this happen?
The pagans still left in Rome took the fall of their city as an indication that Christianity was false. Rome had fallen to the invaders because her people had abandoned their old gods. Faith in Christ could not protect them. It didn’t work. It was time to begin a new cycle of prosperity by recovering the ancient religion of Jupiter, Mars and Venus and forgetting about the new deity Jesus.
An African bishop named Augustine took it as his mission to write an answer to the Roman critics of the Christian faith. Over several years he produced a long work entitled The City of God. In it, he explicitly adopts the view that God is leading history forward toward its completion at the end of time. He rejects the pagan view that events proceed in cycles which repeat over and over. It is Augustine who is credited with taking the biblical view of history and giving it lasting power. Because of Augustine even secular scientific theories like evolution and political theories like Marxism now depend on the concept of history he defended. Events are moving forward, progressing to some great end.
However, those modern theories make the same mistake Christians and Jews sometimes did. They expect to see the completion of history in this world. The argument of The City of God takes off from Hebrews 11:10 which says that Abraham was looking for a city “whose architect and builder is God.” So history is really the story of two worlds, two “cities” Augustine called them, the city of this world and the city of God. What God is really doing in history is building and developing His invisible city for eternity. The history of all the cities and civilizations of this world is only decoration on top of what is really happening. God is establishing for eternity His city of people who know and love Him.
So the fall of Rome to the Goths was not a failure of the Christian religion. According to Augustine, God had allowed Rome to grow and expand so that when Jesus came the Christian faith could spread quickly and easily. Now that Christianity had touched every corner of the empire Rome was no longer important in God’s plan. God let it go the way of all human kingdoms and allowed it to be punished for its many sins. Rome collapsed, but God’s plan to save the world and establish His own city through Jesus Christ went on.
The plan went on in a completely unexpected little corner of the world. At almost the same time the Goths entered Rome, a sixteen year-old Roman boy named Patricius was captured by another bunch of barbarians and hauled off to a little island we know as Ireland. He was made a slave and put to work tending sheep. He had never before paid attention to his religion, but as a slave he began to pray. After six years he heard God telling him it was time to run. He escaped and boarded a ship which took him back into Roman territory in Europe.
At home once again, the boy began to study. He learned all he could about what it meant to be a Christian and follow Jesus Christ. He became a priest, and then a bishop. And then he heard God speaking to him again, telling him to go back to Ireland. So Patricius, whom we know as St. Patrick, boarded another ship and went back to preach the Gospel to the savages who had enslaved him.
We know about Patrick because he was successful. The Irish embraced the Christian faith with enthusiasm. Patrick not only taught them to love God. He taught them to love God’s Word and love learning. The Irish formed monasteries, built libraries and began to study Scripture and all the great books of civilization. There began to be scholars in Ireland as good as any in Rome.
At the very same time, throughout the fifth century, that fateful August 24th was recognized as the first step in the disintegration of the Roman empire. In order to protect itself, the great city called home all its best and brightest soldiers and citizens. Roman garrisons in Europe and England were deserted. Roman civilization and Roman Christianity began to collapse and be withdrawn from those places. Libraries fell apart and books were lost. Christian faith dwindled. England and Europe fell back into barbaric ways.
Then God’s plan began to unfold. Those savages who enslaved a young boy a century before were now Christians and scholars. God had sent a missionary to them from Europe. Now the Irish monks became missionaries themselves. In the sixth century they traveled all over England and Europe, bringing the Gospel back to the place from which it had come to them. They also brought back the great classics of scholarship. They founded new libraries and taught the barbarians to read. As Thomas Cahill puts it, after Rome fell it was the Irish who saved civilization.[1]
Yet it’s clear that the most important work of those Irish missionaries was preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Though he died two years before Patrick went back to Ireland, Augustine was proved right. God is not so concerned with the history of great human civilizations. The history which matters to God is the spreading of the message of Jesus. The pagans were right about this much. Human civilizations do rise and fall in cycles. But God’s plan for history goes forward. People are won to Christ and brought into the city of His love.
It’s happening in our own time. The Episcopal church is very aware that the African and Asian churches it founded in the last few centuries are its largest congregations. They are now sending missionaries to England. One estimate is that there are fifteen hundred African Episcopal missionaries working in Britain. They will come to the United States as well. Our own Covenant Church is larger by thousands in Congo than it is here in our country. God is not in the business of building national pride and security. He’s in the business of winning people to Jesus and leading them toward the day of resurrection and joy.
God’s providence is guiding history. He guided Babylon and Persia and Greece so that His people would be chastened and brought back to Him. He guided Rome so that Jesus could be born in a world where the Good News could travel quickly. He guided Ireland so that the Gospel could be returned to lands where it had been forgotten. And God is guiding our country and all the countries of today’s world so that people may find Jesus Christ and in Him find real hope.
As world events unfold around us, I encourage you to remember what God is really up to. And remember also that He is not just guiding events. As we will see next week, He is guiding each of us, leading us toward Jesus Christ and His salvation. That’s the plan behind all of history. We will say the Creed in a moment, affirming our belief in the resurrection of the dead. That’s our real hope.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2002 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] See How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1995).