Hope Arises As We Approach Another 500 Year Shift, One Now Overdue.

This post is a little lengthy and hours in the making, as I sit here in Blowing Rock, on quite a damp morning, doing my disciplined read now in Daniel.

New insights from the scriptures have been swirling through my mind these last few days. As well, one is without excuse for such wonderous and complimentary thought given so much information at thumbs reach by way of the internet.

Of course I am an early riser, now with four hours invested in one post!

Having no doubt read this old book a hundred times, it has long been pivotal in my theology; the man Daniel also most admired by me.

Some believe the Book of Daniel was written about him but not necessary by him. Layered both with history and revelation, the exact window when it was written also long debated; thought somewhere between 536 and 164 BCE.? That's quite a range in time. A 500 or so year window when much was happening not only inside of Isreal but around the globe.

The writer clearly brings prophetic voice to the scriptures, much like the earlier Micah, proclaiming the arrival of "One like the Son of man." The writer mentions as well the angel Gabriel's involvement in laying out what many have also long debated regarding end-times eschatology.

When I layer all my thoughts on top of the current contemptious political fervor, one with a growing religious emphasis around all three Abrahamic faiths, I must wonder if we are on the cusp of another 500 year, radical shift.

As well, I am no longer as convinced of some "end-time" occurrence. Rather curious as to how much time must pass before all eventually come to a common belief, then occupying a New Heaven and a New Earth.

“For he is the living God and he endures forever; his kingdom will not be destroyed, his dominion will never end. He rescues and he saves; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions.” Daniel 6:26-27.

Love that last line, likely added as a stinger, the lions' den rescue certainly convincing Daniel of this Hebrew God ability to rescue, as would be the case with Peter and others some 500 years or so later.

Christians today may think that Isreal was God's only focus, Babylon only a tool for their refinement and return, but that's not so. God loves "Babylonians" as well. Don't forget Daniel's service to such non-Hebrews, and before him, Joseph and Moses, obviously God was simultaneously stirring hearts well beyond the hundreds of Hebrews, and in distant places across the far east, as well as in India.

Confucius was born in 551 BCE...opening minds to spiritual realities, though not the Christianity that would later be revealed in Antioch, yet stirring a spiritual openess still spoken of today! As well the Buddha, born as Siddhartha Gautama around 563 BCE, setting up another stirring in the ancient Indo-Gangetic plains of India.

Evangelicals may not see these primitive religions as God moments, but the God I know as reflected in the man Jesus works in ways we humans too often write off as "works of the enemy!" I prefer to think of a loving Being who controls the billions of expanding galaxies while ever revealing himself (pardon the pronoun) to his deeply loved humanity.

This God unwilling that any should perish was likely laying ground work for a day when all would come to know this "Word become flesh," and now by the Spirit "dwelling among us."

Daniel and other writers all simply providing trajectory. Again, the prophet Micah was a little ahead of schedule, prophesing of Bethlehem's birth in 800 BCE, yet necessary promises held onto during the major waves of Isreal's deportation to Babylon in 597 BCE and 586 BCE.

Cyrus, Ezra & Nehemiah, around 458 BCE to 430 BCE. Then 27 C.E. with Augustus empowered, the Roman Empire was born. Relatively 500 year windows, likely necessary for our slow learning curve as humans.

I am so intrigued by time and timing, those 500 year "aHa!" windows, be they with Daniel, Confucius or Buddha, where humans are spiritually rattled, even those absent of the words we now possess, words of Abraham, as captured by Moses and numerous prophets, leading us toward Bethlehem and then framing the Body of Christ, as captured in the canon of scripture. Miraculously improbable!

Then 500 years later Christianity was gaining the world's attention given favor by way of a ruler named Constantine, who reigned from 458 to 430 CE.

The east would soon began to split off doctrinally from the western church and given the Roman threats. Then suddenly another major religious marker was laid down with Mohammed visiting the Cave of Hira near Mecca in 610 CE.

Upon consultation with a Christian mystic

by the name of Waraqah ibn Nawfal, he was told the vision recieved was also from Daniel's named angel, Gabriel? One has to wonder given the pre-Islamic Christian influence, yet esteeming Jesus as Divine, Mohammed departed from the traditional theology which by then had been framed by the Canons of Nicaea.

Perhaps these Christian writings were scarcely available to the masses, majority non-readers Im told, only then through trade routes, neighboring empires, and regional conversions, primarily via commercial caravans.

Parenthetically, even in North America native tribes were being stirred, Cahokia Woodhenge (c. 1000 CE): Built by Mississippian culture builders in Illinois; this massive circle of cedar posts precisely tracked solar markers to signal seasonal religious gatherings and agricultural planting cycles.

Then came the Great Schism in 1054 CE and still later the Reformation in 1517. Now after numerous windows of time, these Abrahamic religions are in a collective battle.

Not all this shifts among various tribes and nations have been even 500 year windows but a pattern does seems visible, though the math is not exact. Thus my mind swirls with possibilities around this One unwilling that any should perish.

Good News again awaits, regardless of the madness of our day. Hopefully some of it is captured in my next Amazon release, one likely the most controversial of all.