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Sacramento Central SDA Church

Chris Buttery

A Stolen Generation

For millennia, people from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds have found direction and encouragement in the inspired pages of the Bible.

In his day, Jesus directed listeners to search the prophecies of Scripture to find Him, the only way of salvation.

2000 years later, as we stand on the break of eternity, we no less need the purpose and hope God's Word provides.

Sacramento Central Church brings you Receiving the Word, timely Bible messages presented by pastors Chris Buttery and Mike Thompson.

Amazing Revelations await you in God's holy word, the Bible.

Have you ever heard of the word colonialism?

Colonialism, it is the policy and practice of a power in extending control over weaker peoples or areas in populating it with settlers and exploiting it economically.

History tells us that during the 1800s, it was the age of the empires.

It was a race to see which nation could claim the most amount of territory and in turn, increase its sustenance and more importantly, its dominance in the world.

The latter was achieved through education, but more on that in just a moment.

It's interesting, and yet people today, as well as countries to this day, still struggle with identity crisis, with post-colonial economic problems, and social and religious conflicts.

The colonial experience caused the colonized to perceive themselves as inferior to the colonizer.

As a result, the natives considered their culture, their custom, their religion, their way of life, their race inferior to those of their master, and they tried to identify themselves with the empire through means of assimilation and through education.

Now colonialism is not a recent or modern invention.

We can go a long way back in Earth's history to see different versions of it, albeit a little more fierce and severe, springing up along the landscape of history.

With each conquest, the Assyrian ruler Tiglath-Pileser III introduced a policy that came to have a decisive effect on the latter history of the Near East.

This made him stand out from every Assyrian leader and possibly every king of every nation before him.

After each conquest, Tiglath-Pileser III transplanted the native population to other parts of his empire.

This policy resulted in a large-scale forced migration breaking the nationalistic spirit of various nations.

The exchange of nations was intended to create an empire whose people no longer considered themselves to be, for example, Syrian, or to be an Israelite, or to be from Israel.

It was designed to forestall any potential uprisings.

It was a terrific plan for a despotic ancient leader, that is.

And if you turn with me to Daniel chapter 1, we read of when Judah went into captivity to the hands of Babylonians.

God's people became subjugated to a superior nation.

Israel gave themselves up to strange gods and shunned the messengers of the God of heaven.

They did not listen to the messages of reproof.

God warned his people over and over and over again.

Then he allowed them, and they didn't listen, and then he allowed them to be taken into captivity at the hand of the Assyrians, first of all, the northern tribe, and then Judah, into the hands of Babylonians.

So The focus of Daniel chapter 1 is essentially the re-education of the young people of Israel.

Now, by this time, Daniel had reached the age of 18 when he had been taken captive, but he was still considered to be a young person.

A young person in Jewish literature could have even been 30, but we know from the book, the fourth volume of the Testimonies, page 560, that Daniel was 18 years of age.

I want you to turn with me to Daniel chapter 1 and look at verses 3 and 4 again.

Then the king instructed Asphenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace.

King Nebuchadnezzar looked at the Israelite youth and he chose a few of them who he decided to bring back as captives to Babylon, to be brainwashed and to be educated in the University of Babylon, and then send them back to their home country as puppet rulers.

Essentially, King Nebuchadnezzar sought to change these young men, to forge a nation, and ultimately to bring the Israelites into mainstream Babylonian society.

And he did so by focusing his attention on the education of the young people.

Modern-day despots have also utilized the same methods.

When the Soviet Empire invaded Afghanistan, Afghani youth were taken and put in special educational schools in Russia, where they were taught the philosophy of Marxism and communism.

They were then sent back to be puppet rulers for the Kremlin in Afghanistan.

Hitler did the same thing with the nations he overran in the second, during the Second World War.

He brought key young people from those nations back to Germany to indoctrinate them in the philosophies of Hitlerism, the philosophies of Nazi Germany.

And so they could go back as rulers of their own people, propagating the philosophy among the masses.

King Nebuchadnezzar basically did the same thing.

Jerusalem had fallen and the young people were brought back to Babylon with the intention to educate them or re-educate them and send them back as puppet rulers.

King Nebuchadnezzar, according to the verses we read in verses 3 and 4, selected the most educated and the most influential because you see, if you can influence the smartest, if you can influence the most prized and the most popular children, it makes your job a whole lot easier for the rest to influence the rest of the youth.

So to assimilate these Israelites into Babylonian culture as civilized members of society, like the stolen generation of Australian history, Nebuchadnezzar gave them a Babylonian education.

The education was essentially designed to change them.

And so, they were to be educated, and that education comprised certain different elements.

So they were to be reborn as Babylonians.

And this education comprised, as I mentioned, 4 things.

An introduction to a new language, introduction to new literature, new name, and introduction to a new diet.

So if embraced by the young Israelites, it would have potential to compromise their identity as the children of the creator God, and essentially neutralized their effectiveness and witness in the courts of a foreign nation.

So in the following chapters in the book of Daniel, we learn that given these changes, God's people were susceptible to worshiping other gods, and especially when you go to read the story in Daniel chapter 3.

We read, so he chose these individuals who had possessed knowledge, quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace, and whom they might teach, notice 2 things here in verse 4, the what?

The language and the literature of the Chaldeans, that's right, The language and the literature of the Chaldeans.

Now, the literature included a thorough training in the classical language and script of the country, that is, in Babylonian language and in cuneiform writing, in addition to colloquial Aramaic.

The youth were to be basically immersed in Babylonian history, in Babylonian culture, and in the Babylonian arts.

Their old way of life was to essentially be forgotten.

They were no longer to be considered Israelites.

And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king's delicacies and the wine which he drank and 3 years of training for them, so at the end of that time, they might serve before the king." And so these were delicacies, these foods, these new foods, this new diet was introduced to these boys that had come from Israel.

And although it would have been an honor to partake of the king's table and food, Daniel and his friends could not participate and partake of that diet.

Number 2, the food had been offered to idols.

And thirdly, some of it was unfit, basically unfit for food and unfit for drink.

Now jump down with me to verse 6 and look at the fourth installment, the fourth way of educating these young boys.

Now from among those of the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

To them the chief of the eunuchs gave names and gave Daniel the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach, and to Azariah Abednego.

So a new name was given to these Hebrew boys.

Now Daniel, when you heard the name Daniel, when Daniel heard his name being called, his name meant God is judge.

And all through Daniel's captivity in Babylon, all through his brainwashing process, all through the time that Nebuchadnezzar was trying to influence his mind, if Daniel kept his name, he would just say, my name is Daniel, God is my judge.

So Nebuchadnezzar knew he had to change the name of Daniel.

And the name Belteshazzar means the keeper of the hidden treasures of Baal.

If you go back to verse 2 of Daniel chapter 1, Nebuchadnezzar ordered his lieutenants to take the golden candlesticks and furniture out of the sanctuary there in the temple in Jerusalem and put them in the pagan temple.

And Bell Marduk, who was the chief of the 13 gods of Babylon, was where they put these particular items of the temple furniture, in his temple.

So now Daniel's name was changed, saying in effect, God is not your judge.

We have the vessels that you use in your worship, Israelite worship.

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A Stolen Generation

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