Old Or New Series

The city building inspector of Paso Robles, Calif. declared the old

furnace in a Mennonite church to be faulty. It had served them well

for many years, but the church officials installed a new furnace.

Shortly after it was in stalled the church burned to the ground. A

faulty furnace was listed as the cause of the blaze. There is no

guarantee that the new will be better than the old even on the

physical level. This is even more true on the level of thought. One

man said after reading the latest book, "What is new in it is not true,

and what is true in it is not new." This is certainty the case in the

realm of theology.

This is not to say that there is nothing new under the sun, for

there are always new applications of old truths. We are not to be

blind to the new like the Pharisees and feel that all that is not

traditional is heresy. Since we do not fully understand all of the

implications of the old, just as they did not understand all the

implications of Old Testament prophecy, we are to give all new ideas

an honest hearing. On the other hand, we dare not be like the

Athenians either, for they spent their time in nothing else but either

to tell or hear some new thing. This is the mentality of our modern

mind. People are crying for the new not because the old has failed,

but because they know nothing about the old, and they have no

foundation.

We do have a foundation as Christians. Christ is our rock, and

the Bible is our anchor, and we have a whole history of

interpretation to build on. When it comes to difficult places of

interpretation we cannot afford to dismiss this history and launch off

into a new interpretation unless we can clearly demonstrate that the

new is superior and has the evidence in its favor. For example, the

orthodox or traditional interpretation of Daniel 2 has been held to by

Josephus, the majority of the early church fathers, all expositors

through the middle ages, and the majority of modern expositors. In

spite of this impressive list for its support I would not hesitate to

depart from them and adopt a new view if the evidence was clear

that they were wrong. Since I have not seen any such evidence I will

continue in the line of the old and expound Daniel according to the

traditional view, and seek to show that the new has no right to claim

our allegiance.

In verse 41 Daniel says that the Roman Empire will be divided as

symbolized both by the two legs and feet of the image, and by the fact

of the iron and clay being mixed. The kingdom is solid iron in the

legs, and so it was powerful at its beginning, but later it gets weak

due to foreign elements that divide its unity and its strength. Mud

just won't miss with metal. Nothing is easier than to show that the

intrusion of the barbarians on the one side and the Arabs and Turks

on the other was the cause for the break down of the unity and

strength of the Roman Empire.

At this point we have to consider an important new idea brought

in by the Dispensational interpretation. They take theses ten toes of

the image and say that they represent ten kings or kingdoms that shall

arise in the last days as a revived Roman Empire. This is an

assumption with no basis in the text. In fact, the text refutes the

assumption. The toes are mentioned in both verses 41-42 as part of

the single fourth kingdom, and they are used to illustrate it as being

part strong and part broken. There is not the slightest hint that they

represent ten different kingdoms into which the Roman Empire

divided. Let alone referring to ten such kingdoms arising centuries

after the collapse of Rome.

It would certainly be impossible to guess that they might stand

for such a thing unless somebody told you, and even then it would

take a great deal of faith in the persons insight to believe he could see

that interpretation in the words of Daniel. It is not worth the gamble

to impose such an unfounded interpretation upon Daniel, for God

will not hold us guiltless if we add to His Word what is not there. If

one is only interested in being new and different, then these ten toes

take on all kinds of possibilities. For example, the anti-sports

Christian could see the ten toes of iron and clay as symbolizing

athlete's foot, and so conclude that Rome fell because of an over

emphasis on sports. There would be a measure of truth in this view,