July 2, 2025 • 44 mins
What does it look like to live with bold faith in a world that seems to be burning down around you?
In this episode of the RevRx Podcast, Chad Potts sits down with Dr. Mark Clark—Marine veteran, retired professor of political science, and author of Daniel in Babylon—to unpack why the ancient story of Daniel matters more than ever for men today.
From political pressure to cultural exile, from trauma to legacy- Daniel’s life gives us a roadmap for resilience, conviction, and quiet strength. Dr. Clark shares how his own experiences in the military and academia gave him a unique lens on the Bible, and why every Christian needs to learn how to stand firm in the fire.
What you’ll learn:🔥 How to hold on to faith in a world hostile to truth🔥 Why Daniel’s trauma didn’t define him—and yours doesn’t have to either🔥 How God uses hardship to shape legacy
This episode will challenge you, encourage you, and help you see your purpose more clearly—even when life gets hard.
📘 Resources Mentioned:➡️ Daniel in Babylon by Dr. Mark Clark: https://wipfandstock.com💸 Use code CONF40 for 40% off at checkout
🧠 Dr. Clark’s Substack (study guide + more): https://marktclark.substack.com
🧭 Want more tools to thrive in faith, family, and health?Join Chad at www.manalivecoaching.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:11):
Hey guys, welcome back to the Rev RX podcast, where we help
you thrive in faith, family, andhealth.
My name is Chad Potts, and I'm your host.
Today's guest is an absolute force.
Doctor Mark Clark is a Marine veteran, a retired professor of
national security and political science, and the author of a
bold new book called Daniel in Babylon, How he navigated
(00:32):
politics and exile and what it means for us today.
I'm so excited for you guys to meet Doctor Clark.
This conversation covers everything from trauma to
politics to biblical masculinity, you name it.
And it's one of the most unique angles on the book of Daniel
that I've ever seen. Doctor Clark blends deep
theology with real life experience, and his message is
(00:54):
especially powerful for those ofus trying to follow Jesus and a
culture that feels more and morelike Babylon by the day.
If you've ever felt like an outsider in your own world, then
this one is for you. Let's dive in with my new
friend, Doctor Mark Clark. Mark, brother, what a privilege
(01:15):
it is to have you here on the show today.
Thank you so much for joining usfrom Sunny Colorado.
Thank you, I appreciate it. How's how's the weather there?
Oh, it's beautiful sunshine, 85°.
We're we're in good shape. OK.
All right. Sounds good.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it. It's a good opportunity.
Yes, Sir, one of my former guest, Ken samples from Reasons
to Believe put me on to your work and I have been.
(01:38):
I've been reading your book, Daniel and Babylon, and have
just really been drawn to it. You've done incredible work and
I can't wait to delve into into that with you today.
But First off, I'd just like to hear a little more about you.
Can you introduce yourself to our listeners and help us get to
know you a little better? Sure.
Thank you, Chad. So my name is Mark Clark.
(01:59):
I'm retired or what's called an emeritus professor of political
science and national security studies where I taught at Cal
State University San Bernardino in California for 30-4 years.
That was prior. Prior to that, I was in the US
Marine Corps. In fact, that's what the Lord
got a hold of me. It was while I was in the
Marines, and it was from a guy from Texas, and he and I still
(02:19):
remain friends to this day, though he lives in Arkansas.
We don't see each other that often.
We still, you know, love corresponding and communicating
and things like that. So it was interesting for me and
the Marines. You know, I I was in the middle
of the Vietnam era. The end of the Vietnam era was
down for the evacuation of Saigon.
And 50 years ago last month, April, May.
(02:40):
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's been a while, 50 years, but that's where the Lord
grabbed my attention. I found out that while I was
physically strong and physicallycourageous, I was a moral
coward. I wouldn't admit that I liked
this Bible stuff. And the Lord kind of held up a
mirror to my soul and, and it made me kind of realize, OK,
Lord, I've got to step up to theplate.
(03:00):
And so I did. But I think it was that milieu,
that environment for me that captured my attention, both my
faith and my observation of international politics from a
national security studies perspective.
And you know, I originally thought I was going to be a
pastor. And the good Lord changed my
direction a couple times and gotgot me into a PhD program in
(03:22):
Strategic Studies, landed me as a professor.
That's what where my study of Daniel began.
And just if you have a second here, I'll tell you the
background of that. I was going to ask that.
That's that's awesome. Yeah.
OK, so I was early in my career as an untenured professor, which
means you're vulnerable and be fired at the drop of a hat.
And I was running a master's program in national security
(03:44):
studies. It was the end of the Cold War.
It was afterwards, it was early 90s and I also Co hosted Hugh
Ross's show on TBN Reasons to Believe.
And at one point these two Deanspulled me aside and ripped me a
new one saying what are you doing mixing your faith and in
the university? Honestly, Chad, I got kind of
mad at first. You know, in the Marines you
either flee or you fight. Well, I'm as a Marine I.
(04:07):
Ready to fight? I was ready to fight until the
Lord reminded me of that verse where he said, blessed are you
when you're persecuted for my namesake.
And now this isn't persecution like what the early church or
church worldwide goes through, But it was enough of a shock
that I realized I needed to finda better way.
I calmed down immediately with the words of Jesus.
But then I thought, well, how will I model living in this
(04:28):
political exile, as it were, secular university that's
hostile to faith. I didn't stop anything.
I didn't stop proclaiming my faith.
I kept books on my shelf that, you know, in fact, I wrote in a
chapter in a book, professors who believe.
And so students come in knew I was Christian.
So that was no problem there. But Daniel, I, I was given an
(04:50):
opportunity to do a six week study on Daniel, how he did his
political appeals while in exilein Babylon.
And that's what began my interest.
And, and every time I've taught that series and I've taught it
over the course of 30 some odd years, I found that it's
encouraged people to look to thesovereignty of God before
politics and to see that there'ssomething much bigger going on
(05:12):
and we have to pay attention to that.
You know, it really kind of put on my heart at that time.
I really want to write a book onthis and I'll need time to do
the research to do the background and, and my wife and
I, she was gracious enough to allow me to invest in my
retirement so that I could retire early and begin that
process. So I was able to do that over
(05:32):
the course of about six years between starting the process,
doing the research, and then eventually writing the book and
finding the publisher and and doing all that.
It's a project of love, isn't it?
It's exactly, you know, labor oflove is exactly what it is.
Yes, Sir, that's. Yeah, I love that.
You know, I, I don't know if youcan see my bookshelf behind me.
I have wall to wall as far as you can see.
(05:53):
OK. I love to read love books.
And one of the things that intrigues me about you and, and
I mean no disrespect when I say this, but you know, a lot of
these biblical books, they're written by pastors are written
by people in seminaries in different places.
But I'm drawn to, and I don't know why, maybe it's because of
my background too. I'm drawn to people who aren't
(06:14):
professional theologians, but who are able to articulate the
words of ancient Scripture, approach it with an academic
approach like you have, and be able to make it modern and be
able to make it approachable forthe everyday reader.
And that's really what drew me to you.
I love that you use your, your unique background and maybe we
(06:34):
can dig into that a little bit, your unique background in
political science, national security to really approach how
you're shape how you, how you came about this project.
So you know, political science, national security, you don't
always think, OK, this guy's going to be a Bible scholar,
he's going to write a biblical based book.
But you've done just that. And I think that approach is
(06:56):
unique to you. Can you tell us a little bit
about how your background has influenced how you approach the
book? Sure, that's great.
I mean, my undergraduate degree was in history, ancient history,
so the classical civilization, Rome and, and Greece.
But along the, along my career, I, I was blessed by God.
You know, it's kind of funny. I look back and I could list 50
(07:17):
things where, you know, I had myidea what I would do and then
God would provide a different route.
Same here. Yeah, I'm sure you can identify
with that. One of the things that happened,
I, I was chair of the Departmentof Political Science as well as
graduate director for seven years.
And I was just so tired of beingdistracted from what I wanted to
do. And then I stepped down and I, I
(07:38):
got an offer. The Provost of our university
worked with six other Cal State universities and said, hey, we
want to write a grant with the director of National
intelligence of all things and create a center of academic
excellence. And I, I was brought to me.
They figured out pretty quickly they didn't know what they were
doing, which was fortunate for me, but I was sort of hesitant
because I'd been through bureaucracy.
(07:59):
I'd kind of tired of it. But I said, you know, I went to
a men's retreat and I asked the guys to pray for me on this
because I really didn't know what to do.
Within seconds, one of the guys looks up from prayer and goes,
of course, it should be a Christian that does it.
And I thought, OK, well, that's,that's the answer to that.
So I wrote this grant and $3.75 million, my first, first grant,
(08:22):
and it was over five years and it was managing 7 universities.
Now, if you know anything about universities, they're like
shepherding cats, faculty, administrators.
But it was wildly successful. It was the first multi campus
consortium. I got a subsequent grant from
the intelligence community againto extend it, make it deeper,
make it broader, then get a National Science Foundation
(08:45):
grant to actually add a master'sdegree in cybersecurity and
intelligence. And then the kind of the caps on
the smallest grant. But the one that was most
intriguing to me was by the Intelligence Advanced Research
Project activity. Now that's a mouthful, but it's
kind of like the Defense Department's DARPA, the advanced
defense stuff for intelligence. And I got to work intimately
(09:05):
with some folks at George Mason University's, a couple of other
universities, as well as my students.
I'm trying to really figure out how can we improve intelligence
analysis and I think that's whatI brought to the table here.
And I would say it most basically, I use what's called
abductive reasoning. This is Ken Samples loves this.
A lot of people get confused by it.
All it means is in in traditional science, it's an
(09:27):
inductive approach and you have proof of its positivity or
deductive. We have a series of assumptions
and and therefore these have to be true.
Abductive goes to text that's not clear and says all right,
what's the most likely explanation for this why, for
example, and this is one of my favorite of this research
project was why was Daniel if you look at Psalm 137, it ends
(09:50):
with this very gruesome wish smash the children happy as he
who smashes your children against the rocks.
It's like whoa, what's going on here?
We don't see anything like that with Daniel.
So what are those, what are those things?
How did he, how did he do it without, you know, vengeance in
mind and vindictiveness? So I look for abductive
reasoning, but then I apply thisone very specific form of
(10:13):
abductive reasoning at the end of the book that you've looked
at. And it's called an analysis of
competing hypotheses. And that's directly what the
intelligence community uses. And the reason why I did it was,
you know, while I used Daniel toguide my career path, it was, in
a sense, subjective, meaning I experienced God's blessing
because I followed the model of Daniel.
(10:34):
I saw it, I experienced it, I realized it was true.
But one of the things that I found was there's so many modern
secular scholars, liberal theologians, and even some of
the evangelical community reallybegin to doubt the authenticity
of Daniel. And so my whole reason for
putting in the analysis competing hypothesis is to say,
OK, what are all the arguments and evidence people use to
(10:57):
either support or oppose the book?
And in what I found it was it was very reliable.
There was only, you know, I don't have to get in the
technical part, but basically itwas far more reliable than the
alternative hypothesis, the alternative hypothesis that
people bring up. And they just sort of throw it
out there. It's it's fact is that it was a
second century anonymous Jew that wrote the book and it
(11:20):
wasn't a real 6th century person.
And so I found that, you know, the way I phrase it is in
personal level and in a professional level.
I find the Book of Daniel being super reliable.
It's a very good explanation of what happened, a real person
living in the 6th century who really experienced this and the
doubts that people brought up. And, and honestly, I would say
as I went through that process, doubts crept into my mind.
(11:42):
I've really had to work at, you know, is this incorrect
hypothesis. And sure enough, I think at the
end of the day, I found that it was.
Yeah, and and you, you presentedin a very clear way.
So I want to encourage listenersout there grab the book because
they're so we won't go into all the the detail here today, but
you know, it's a study in Danieland and it's of great value
(12:03):
spiritually, but it's also a great surface level approach as
to really how to go about any ofthe text.
It's almost, you know, it almosthas a component of apologetics
to it. And I really like how you've
drawn all that together. Well, thank you.
And I think there's two ways in which it's an apologetic in that
(12:24):
it's I think, you know, Daniel showed us with his behavior that
he politically political behavior, people respected him
and realized he was a religious Jew.
And he always honored the God ofhis fathers.
And they highly revered that they didn't always like it.
Because we see in chapter 6 of Daniel, you know, under Darius,
(12:45):
there's a bunch of people that are threatened by his
Jewishness, his his integrity. But I think, you know, he's a
reliable person. And so I think in a way we can
be, we can learn from his model how to live politically and be a
witness to Christ in our generation, whether it's high
political office or at the locallevel or in family or in work at
the university, secular university.
(13:07):
And then the second part of thatis the more formal apologetic,
the defense of the book of Daniel.
I think those two things, one byexample and the other an
articulated apologetic of the book of Daniel.
Yeah, it's a beautiful blend of this and very, very unique.
I haven't come across anything quite like this before.
So kudos to you for for making this your love.
Would we call it a labor of love?
Labor of love. Well, thank you.
(13:28):
I do appreciate that, Chad. Thank you, Sir.
So getting into it a little bit,just kind of zooming out.
All right, let's let's think about today with your experience
in political science and national security.
We just came out of an election season.
Those are always fun. Doesn't matter which side you,
you know, you lean towards. Aren't we just always glad to be
done with it? But there's so much, it seems
like a lot of polarization in our world today.
(13:49):
How would you describe the political climate of today?
And then can you kind of help usthink about that in terms of
Daniel's day? Is that different?
Similar What? What are the?
What's the comparison? I like that.
Well, I think the first thing isDaniel is expressly in exile,
right? He is taken from his home in
Judah, marched 900 miles to Babylon, living in a foreign
(14:12):
land, crypt of his identity, likely castrated, certainly
given the Pagan name. And yet he found a way to
thrive. I think particularly we in the
modern West, because life is comparably much better, tend to
forget that we are exiles on this earth, that we live first
for the Kingdom of heaven and then for the Kingdom we live in.
(14:33):
As you, as you know, I've servedin the US Marine Corps.
I believe it's important to serve the country and to obey
authority, but it's not the highest calling.
The highest calling is God. And so that's one part.
The second part is, you know, Jeremiah was the only prophet
that said, you're going to hear a lot of false prophecies about
what to do and you're going to, you know, they're going to tell
(14:55):
you, go ahead and rebel against Babylon.
Go ahead and do this. And his, he says in his letter
to the Exiles in Jeremiah 29, hesays, no, pray for the peace and
prosperity of Babylon. Have children, raise families,
do those things. And as Babylon prospers, so too
will you. And Habakkuk, you know, God
tells Habakkuk, who doesn't likeBabylon, hey, it's up to me to
(15:16):
judge and I will judge Babylon at the end of time.
And you have to be content with my judgement.
Well, I think the similarity to today is this in that it was
chaotic, a lot of mixed messageswith only one or two true
messages. And I think the same thing as
today, if you take all the news media and all the you know, now,
(15:36):
no offense, podcast, but but also blogs and all the other
versions, there's a cacophony and chaotic messages out there
about, you know, our political situation, who's right, who's
wrong. And one of the great things
about Daniel, what I really loved how he did this was his
great wisdom was in looking at God's Kingdom first, looking at
(15:58):
the intentions of the political leader, second in any of the
situations and then trying to meet the wishes of the king.
But that that conformed to godliness.
And he did it in a way no one has done it.
I mean, Paul does it slightly and others too, but it's most
explicit in the book of Daniel. And I think that's true for us
today. It's like just from my field,
(16:21):
you know, I look at international politics.
People say, well, what about God?
Where's God in all these wars? When you look at Syria, you look
at Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine, you look at Israel and Hamas or
Lebanon OR Iran. And what I say is, well, let's
look to God first. God, we know wants to bring and
redeem all peoples, nation, tribes and tongues.
So where's where is this happening?
(16:42):
What we find is in states, like a lot of really staunch Islamist
states, you can't penetrate withthe gospel, but if a war breaks
out and people are taken out of their country, you can reach
them in a way that you couldn't otherwise.
And Ukraine, the same thing. They're culturally one way, but
a lot of the refugees have movedout and we're reaching with the
(17:02):
gospel, and I support ministriesthat support those efforts.
Civil war, same thing in Angola,there's massive 4 / 4 million
people displaced. How do we reach them?
The same idea. Well, the same thing in this
country. Be a light, be salt.
I talk to, I have a friend, a neighbor in California who, you
know, as soon as Trump was elected, he's not a Trump fan,
you know, and he comes and he goes, tell me he's not going to
(17:24):
be a tyrant. And so we sit down and say,
look, I'm not a Trump whisperer.But here's things I would
caution you to do. And I've had friends say, you
know, that's an important ministry reaching out to people
who are Christian and talking with him.
But I also talked to people who are super pro Trump and say,
well, have you thought about this?
And let's let's let's be sensible about this.
Where's the Kingdom of God? So it's, you know, and I have my
(17:46):
political inclinations, you know, typically anyone in the
military and it's done what I'vedone has been on the
conservative spectrum. But the book of Daniel changed
how I thought about politics. It's not the most important
thing. And I think maybe that's some
big take away from the book of Daniel that I have.
I think so too. And, you know, the longer I, I
don't like to think I'm old and wise, I'm, I'm getting old, but
(18:07):
I'm not. But the longer I do this, the
more I kind of find myself in neither extreme, the more I find
myself kind of in the middle. And, and it's almost like you
see things through the lens of the Bible that is far different
from what our culture is, is kind of screaming at us.
And, you know, it's so you're, you're so right when it comes to
all right, Daniel was in exile. He was in a land where his
(18:32):
values, his faith was not accepted.
And, and we'll talk about kind of what got him there in a
minute. But isn't that kind of how a lot
of Christians feel in our world today, particularly here in
America? You know, we, we feel like we're
in a culture that is becoming increasingly hostile to the
Christian faith and, and we kindof feel like we don't belong
(18:53):
either. I would say that's true.
And I think you know, I noticed part of my conversion was
realizing out of a detachment ofMarines on a ship of about 45.
There was only one explicit Christian.
That's the guy that I that his study have it's his study of God
and and the Bible, because when intrigued me, but I think he
tells me later that first year of my relationship with him was
(19:16):
the worst year of his life, biggest testing.
And although I don't remember it, I do think that what I was
looking for is this reliable. And so we are countercultural.
You know, if you've watched the chosen at all, you at this their
symbol at the beginning is the fish swim in one way and then
1234 turn the other way. And that's really we are
countercultural. And I think one of the biggest
(19:37):
takeaways other that I have is, you know, it's been said Andrew
Breitbart, the original founder.Breitbart said politics is
downstream of culture. The culture is really changed in
America. It's wildly, you know, it's been
secular for a long time, but it's even gotten worse with
progressivism and locism and things like that.
Very anti many ways anti Christian.
(19:59):
I mean, some of it's similar to Christianity, but it's taken to
an extreme that's. Detached from that.
Yes, the extremes I think that we're seeing, yeah.
Yeah, and and, and on the right,there's a whole different
version of extremism as. Well, yeah.
But I but what I like about Daniels, he re centers me in, in
the way in which he behaved, howhe thought about it.
(20:19):
He treated people with respect. You know, first Pier 315 says we
should always be prepared to give a defense for the hope
that's in US. Yet with gentleness, respect and
a clear conscience, I find that approach is a Daniel esque
approach. That's the one I can talk to
political extremes. I don't shout, I don't do stuff
(20:40):
on social media. And there's a fundamental reason
why as you, as you, I'm sure everyone knows, but let's be
explicit about it. 80% of the content, 80% of the impact of
the content we share is non verbal cues, right?
So smile, your face, your facialexpression, your calmness on
social media, all that stripped away.
So we go all the extremes and I don't engage in debates.
(21:04):
Instead of that, I'll say let's get together and talk.
And I'm not going to argue through text with a position by
anyway. It just doesn't it doesn't it
makes things worse. It doesn't help things.
Yeah, yeah, very wise. And you know, anytime you can
sit down and talk with someone, get their point of view, see
things from their perspective, share your perspective, I think
(21:24):
that's always the way to go. I think, yeah.
And we see Daniel and we see allof the appeals and, and in the
book, again, you listeners checkit out because it's incredible.
You look at all the appeals thatDaniel had First was this appeal
about his diet. And that seems insignificant,
but nothing in the Bible is insignificant, right?
(21:45):
And so we read about that and we're like, all right, what does
that mean? And you know, that was that
wasn't a demand. He was respectful of authority.
He gave a an alternative. He took into account his
overseers fears that there was just so many ways that you can
see the wisdom of God coming out.
And let's not forget how young Daniel was, right?
(22:07):
Yeah. Teenager.
Yeah. You see, that's not, you know,
that's not a typical teenager response, but that's the wisdom
of God, I believe, coming out inhim.
Can you speak to that a little bit?
And just that wisdom that we getfrom God in how to combat those
that we may not agree with, those that maybe even, you know,
(22:28):
in a way kind of lording over usand making us exile, so to
speak. Yeah, I love that.
You know, it's, it's fascinatingbecause there's any number of
points in which Daniel could have tried to refuse anything.
He would have likely been killed.
That would have been in story. We wouldn't have the.
Book we wouldn't have Daniel. We wouldn't have Daniel, and yet
he still found a way to keep a separateness from the the
(22:51):
Babylonian elite that we're going to put through his
three-year master's degree of Babylonian administration, as I
call it. And the thing that I find
fascinating too, is that he's young, like you said, maybe 15.
We don't know exactly, but around 15, he's also in a system
where so think of it and compared to the secular system
we have today, you have to assume Darwin's right.
(23:12):
Evolution is correct. Progressive is the dream.
You know, all those things. And yet in the Babylonian
society, it was the pantheon of their gods, their dismal
religious view, their paganism, their sacrifices, their
shamanism, as it were, all this.And yet even within that, he
found ways to excel at the good things that were in that
(23:33):
education system. In fact, he was found, he and
his friends were found 10 times better in order to magnify it
better than the others. But he didn't buy into it.
And I think that's true for us today.
We can be in the secular society, take the things that
are true and ignore the evil, ignore the bad and make the best
of it and realize that, you know, even when people are
lording it, lording over us things, that's actually a golden
(23:56):
opportunity for a witness in a way that you otherwise wouldn't
get. Like I think in my first year
with my friend Todd, who I talked about in the Marines, I
didn't know I was lording it over him or being a jerk, let's
put it politely. But for whatever reason, it I
needed to see that it was a reliable test.
And perhaps many of the people that seem opposed to us are
(24:16):
waiting to see how we react or full under pressure.
Does it? Is it really, is what you're
saying really true? Is there someone superior?
Do you really have genuine peace?
Do you really trust your God forthe outcome of these sins and
so? Yeah, there there's a world
that's watching. Yeah.
And that was the case with him, too.
The way you phrase it in the book.
(24:36):
I wrote this down because I wanted to.
I thought this was great. It reminds me of Paul's words.
Be in the world, not of the world you wrote that, that
Daniel was engaged in, but separate from the society that
he was in. And I think that's what we're
talking about. We're talking about, you know,
how can we be, we have to be engaged in this world.
I mean, we escapism is not helping anybody.
(24:58):
You know, it's not like let's just endure this till we go to
heaven. No, we, we have a purpose.
We have a God-given purpose to live out.
And you know, even though this may be hostile territory, even
though this may not be in the ideal condition, we can still
thrive. And so learning that balance of
how to be engaged in the world, but still separate from the
(25:18):
world. And Daniel did that, I think
perfectly. I think that's one of the big
reasons Daniel's in our Canon isthat, you know, it shows us how
are you in the world, but not ofthe world.
Well, you, you separate yourselfand you don't do it by making
the bands and you don't do it byhaving debates.
You don't do it with a heart full of full of hate towards the
other people. You know, it can be done with a
(25:40):
gentle heart. It can be done with love, but
there's still, you know, is finding a balance between, OK,
I'm going to be a part of this whole thing because I have a
purpose here, but I'm not going to.
I'm not going to give up what I value.
I'm not going to give up my faith.
I'm not going to sell out to theculture.
(26:01):
And I'm not going to compromise what I know to be true.
I, I think that's really good, Daniel.
You know, his, his request for the vegetarian diet, like you
said, respectful. A genuine alternative would meet
the objectives of the king. The King's objectives or goals
were not to corrupt his, his staff.
It was to honor them, but also to elicit loyalty.
(26:22):
And yet he found a way to say, no, we're going to be, we're
going to be just as healthy as you want or better.
And yet we're going to be separate.
We'll be identified as being separate.
But it's done with that gentleness.
You know, I think a lot of people mistake the the
gentleness and the humility of Daniel.
Maybe not. Maybe if they really paid
attention, they wouldn't. And even at Jesus times for
(26:42):
being wuss or weak or not a fighter.
And that's like the furthest thing from the truth because we
do live in this world. It is, you know, worldliness is
sinfulness. Yes.
Human government is really a concession to the sin we see
from the fall. The temptation is for all of us
to engage in politics by worldlymeans, which is shout them down,
(27:06):
out, argue, umm, whatever, yell,let them scream at them,
separate from them and that doesno good.
That's not salt and light. That doesn't change the culture.
The culture. Again, politics is downstream
from culture. If we really want to change
culture, we change one person ata time by seeing that
gentleness, that respectfulness and yet firm conviction.
(27:26):
Daniel was willing to die for his faith on 2 occasions.
The first one is the is the appeal for a vegetarian diet.
The second one is in under Dryas's court.
He was descent into the lion's den.
He was not going to come. And his three friends in Daniel
chapter 3 said, no, we're not going to worship Nebuchadnezzar
in this idol. There's no, that's not weak,
that's very strong, but it's very calm, very respectful.
(27:50):
So I think, you know, we have, we have to disabuse our notion
that we have to fight by worldlymeans and we ought to take
stock. What are those?
What are those worldly means we're looking at?
Well, it's again, it's argument,it's hatred, it's separation,
it's pox on your house. And we've seen that does no
good. It's actually making things
worse. But it's that gentleness, that
respect, that willingness to engage one-on-one or in smaller
(28:12):
groups, that can change people'shearts in a way that arguments
never, will never have. And you know, look at the fruit
of those things, you know, what's the fruit of the, the
heated arguments and all that? That's division.
You know, that's not from God, but leading by example and using
the phrase that comes to mind isa meekness.
And when I think about Daniel, but it's a Christ like quality.
(28:33):
Christ was meek. And one of the ways I teach
meekness is its power under control.
So Jesus, of course, had all thepower in the world, right?
He's God. He's he's man, but he's God.
He's, you know, 100% both. And he had all, I mean, he had
all the power. They're his fingertips at his
disposal. But he surrendered that power
(28:54):
for the greater good. You know, he, he, he could have
called, the scripture says he could have called legions of
angels to come save him. You know, he didn't need Peter
to, to cut the guy's ear off, right?
That's fighting back with the means of the, with the ways of
the world. But he kept that power under
control in order to accomplish the Father's will.
And so I love that because Jesushimself, like Daniel, had a
(29:17):
clear goal. His clear goal was to go to the
cross and die. In First Corinthians 2, Paul
tells us that it was a mystery what was going to happen.
Had the rulers of this age knownwhat was going to happen, they
would not have crucified our Lord of glory.
So Jesus kept things hidden until the right time and the
right place so that he could accomplish his mission.
Fortunately, our mission is not that tough, although it can be
(29:39):
for some people. You know, you can be beheaded.
A lot of Christians have been martyred in the past.
It's to go out and make disciples around the world of
out of every nation, tribe and tongue and then the end will
come. For Daniel, it was slightly
different. It was, I think Isaiah 49 six,
and it says this and it's reallyJudah's kind of Great
Commission, but also a description of what Jesus was
(30:02):
going to do. But in particular, Daniel took
at the heart. And that is, it is too small a
thing for you to be my servant, to restore the tribe of Jacob
and bring back the remnant I have kept of Israel.
And I will make you a light to the Gentiles so that my
salvation will spread across theearth.
And Daniel did that in spades. I mean, he was the one that did
(30:22):
the prayer of repentance and restoration in Daniel Chapter 9.
He's the one that got Osiris. Probably.
We prompted Cyrus to enact Azidik a year or two ahead of
schedule. Ahead of the Jeremiah's
prophecy. Everyone recognized that he
served the God of heaven. Even if they didn't, they didn't
understand it or didn't follow him.
So he had a mission. And I think we have missions
too, and we have to keep that goal in mind.
(30:44):
I think that if we subordinate our behavior to God's Kingdom
and the goals that He has for usand whatever the way they
manifest. I mean, to me it was being that
representative and doing the best I could as a professor,
being a good instructor, being agood, but also being there for
students who needed to talk about things outside of that.
And then also in church and in other places and eventually this
(31:04):
book, what are our missions? And it's, you know, a mom taking
care of children, raising them up in the way they should go.
There's a lot of places in whichwe have a purpose and a mission
that's much more important than fighting political battles that
we don't win. We tend not to win anyway.
Absolutely. And I love the way that you've
worded this whole thing. Is that OK, Politics are
important because it's, you know, it's how our world is
(31:25):
shaped. And, you know, so we're not
saying be, you know, you're not saying get out of that.
We're not saying don't care about that, but we're saying
keep the right priorities. It's not as important as God.
It's not as important as the Kingdom of God.
And in a lot of ways, I think that believers find themselves
with a foot in both worlds. We've, you know, we've got a
foot in the Kingdom of God and foot in this world.
(31:46):
And sometimes it's hard to figure out how to navigate that.
And so this book is incredibly helpful, in my opinion, for
really showing us what it looks like to find that balance in a
life that thrives. One of the things I'd like to
kind of not close with because I'm not done but kind of head
that way with is and this just came to me.
But I'm reminded you talk a lot about trauma in the book,
(32:08):
traumatic events. And and I'd like for you to to
speak on that a little bit aboutthere's there's four major and
you covered them briefly a minute ago, but four major
events that happened in his lifethat was traumatic in that
initial like taking him to exile.
And some, you know, what we think most likely happened to
him and how it's a wonder. It's it's a miracle that he did
(32:28):
not end up with something like aPTSD, what we now call as PTSD,
like the psalmist that you quoted earlier, just like bash
all their children's heads. You know, he didn't have that
revenge. He didn't have this entrapment
into the past. And that's a whole different
rabbit trail that we can, we could geek out about that later,
I'm sure, especially with your background and in my background
(32:50):
too. But what what I'm trying to get
to is this, there seems to be this thread in Scripture where
God uses traumatic events in order to accomplish his his will
in order to progress the Kingdomof God.
And in other words, what we're saying is that God turns what
the enemy made for evil, intended for evil, and turns
(33:14):
them for good. So if you think about Daniel
minding his own business, you know, a Hebrew, a Jew, devout
guy, all of a sudden his world is appended and takes a sudden
shift. And I think a lot of times we
read this casually and we don't put ourselves in his sandals as
(33:36):
you write and and really understand what he went through.
So maybe in the rest of our timetogether, let's talk about
putting ourselves in his sandals.
What might that have looked like?
How might look at the traumatic events that most likely happened
in his life, but then let's talkabout the good that came from
it. You know, a lot of times we, a
lot of my listeners, and we've all lived this to where there's
(33:59):
traumatic events that happened in our lives and we wonder why
me or we wonder, where's God? And we wonder, well, without
saying this, sometimes we like, well, if God was good, he
wouldn't let this happen. But what we see is that number
one, God is sovereign. And that's a whole different
conversation too. But he also there, there's a
balance there with our free will, but he also has the
(34:21):
ability because he is sovereign,he has the ability to redeem, he
has the ability to reconcile, and he has the ability to turn
something awful into something good.
Can we can we steer there a little bit with the rest of our
time together? Sure, absolutely.
So with Daniel, you know, I, we mentioned it briefly, he was
(34:42):
probably 15. It's interesting, Isaiah and
Isaiah 39, Zakiah, the king of 100 years before, foolishly
let's at the time the smaller Babylonian invoice come in and
see the temple treasury. And Isaiah, God is mad and tells
them, look, because of what you have done, some of your own
(35:03):
defendant descendants, your own royal blood will be taken as
captives and made eunuchs in thecourt of Babylon.
That was 100 years before. Yeah.
And your temple treasury going to be taken.
And though both those things happen during that period of
time. Now did did this dawn on Daniel
at that time? We don't know.
He doesn't talk about it. Was he a royal descendant of
Hezekiah? If so, he might have been more
privileged, but he was taken. He and his three friends were
(35:26):
taken out of their home, their ability to worship.
They were taken and marched probably 900 miles.
I talked about the route that itwas traditional in the trade in
that time. Yeah, we're not talking about,
you know, a 2 day journey, you know?
Three to four months, Yeah, three to four months.
And there's a lot of walking that's going to happen.
And then he gets there and he's given and maybe along the way
he's given a Pagan name, you know, Beltagazzar and and it's,
(35:49):
you know, God, a Marduk. It's some kind of protection of
Marduk's like. And Daniel was sort of a God,
you know, it's he's taken give taking his real name and given
this false name. But that's part of empires.
Empires and political societies always try to convert your
loyalty to them. And names were a big deal.
You know, you look at the the names of of some of the biblical
(36:09):
figures and like they were chosen on purpose, they were
chosen for a reason. So changing a name is is
significant. That happened a few times by
God, and it also happened a couple times by it was it was
common practice with empires, Yeah.
Yeah, So he's stripped of his family, his local, you know,
community, his, his ability to worship God at the temple.
That's gone. He's given a Pagan name.
(36:30):
And he was likely, in fact, all the early Jewish and Christian
scholars believed he was emasculated.
So he's made a eunuch, which makes, you know, the sense.
They didn't want anyone, particularly foreigners, to
mingle with the King's harem or anything in in a bad way.
And, and the way they did it waspretty brutal.
I mean, they didn't use anesthesia.
They crushed the testes or cut them off.
I mean, just brutal way in whichthis occurred.
(36:51):
Daniel doesn't talk about it forobvious reasons.
To a Jew, a righteous Jew, you know, having siren children
would be really important. Having offspring and longevity
and a name would be important. You couldn't worship in the
assembly. There's a lot of prohibitions
against castrated males and animals from being used in
ritual worship. So Daniel was separated not just
physically, but culturally, spiritually, everything from his
(37:15):
life at a very young age. And yet I think somewhere he
picks up. You know, I talked a little bit
about a potential resolution, how he might have resolved it,
having that close community of three friends and praying
together and talking. They had a shared experience of
captivity. They were, they righteously
followed God and they prayed together.
That was one of the key things. Walking probably helped a lot
(37:36):
too. That's that bilateral
stimulation that can help you reorganize your brain.
So there's a lot of ways in which it could have been that
God used the events, the naturalthings, what one scholar, Ken
Keithley, calls hypernaturalism,Not supernatural, not natural,
but in between, where God's Providence uses the very things
that we go through, horrific as they are, to produce something
(37:57):
in us that will become everlasting glory for us, which
is an amazing thing. And so Daniel, yeah, he gets
there. He decides, I think he commits
along the way, if not before to God's Kingdom purposes following
Isaiah 49, six and then is and he's also gifted.
We see that he's gifted, but hisgifting doesn't come out until
(38:17):
he's under test, under pressure.And his reliance of on God was
what allowed him to express those get that giftedness that
God gave him because he was so willing to follow God in these
circumstances. And you know, it's interesting,
I don't talk about this in the book, but I've read elsewhere
where I did a broad webinar on this with a largely Jewish
scholarly community. And one of the questions that I
(38:39):
got was really good by Shmuel. He said, do you think we Jews
should live like Daniel did in the diaspora, the spread that we
are outside of Israel? And I said you could do worse
than the book of Daniel. And the reason why I say that is
historically, we know for example, the Koreans under
Japanese occupation from the 30sthrough World War 2, they relied
heavily on Daniel to survive andthrive in that very hostile,
(39:03):
noxious environment, horrible environment.
And so did a lot of Manchurian Chinese people follow that were
Christian followed Daniel. Interesting.
Yeah, people been drawing on this for ages.
They have, and it's fascinating you think of it.
We would not have had the book of Daniel had he not done this.
And that Book of Daniel has shaped the way generations have
thought about following God in hostile cultures, political
(39:27):
cultures. And I'm just encouraged by not
only the work you've done, but just in one of the ways that you
worded it, something along the lines of it's a coupling.
It's a coupling of is giftednesswith the wisdom of God.
Each and everyone of us has a giftedness.
You may not realize it yet or maybe you haven't fully tapped
(39:48):
into it, but you are gifted by God to do something and that
that begins to be part of your purpose.
What if we coupled that giftedness with the wisdom of
God man, What could he do? And and you know what, when we
when we come across traumatic things in our life and we begin
to see. Our, our world may be crumbling,
(40:10):
the diagnosis, the the telephonecall or whatever the case may
be. A lot of times we're we're
looking for hope and Daniel gives us that hope in that even
in, you know, the entire world shaking event that had the
potential to do completely traumatize him forever, keep him
(40:31):
stuck in that past. God was with him.
We had the song today that I love Another in the fire comes
from the same same story. There's another in the fire.
He's with him. Daniel tunes in to God and he
trusts God and he follows God closely and he doesn't betray
(40:52):
God in the midst of all of this.And and God leads him to not
only success and thriving in hislife, but for generations to
come. Talk about a legacy.
God took suffering and turned itinto a legacy that people
thousands of years later are still looking to to show that
(41:13):
God still shows up in the tough times.
Isaiah 56 has a passage on eunuchs.
Let not the dry tree say, you know, I have no legacy.
If you follow me and stay humbleand do my Sabbaths, I will give
you a legacy that will not be cut off.
And it's, it's a very interesting imagery of what he
went through, the castration. There's a bigger legacy that can
(41:34):
be had without even children, which is amazing because, you
know, we don't, my wife and I don't have children, but we have
influence. We have God children and
friends, children's and young adults and, and youth that we've
mentored. There's a legacy that can happen
by God that that doesn't depend on physical progeny and and
those are important things. Yeah, brings hope to all of us.
(41:55):
And so, Mark, you're an inspiration.
I've loved this conversation. One of the favorites, One of my
favorites I've had. And can you tell my listeners
where to find out more about you, where to find out more
about the book and and what you're doing?
Sure and so the book can be found on Amazon.
It's you can just go type in Daniel and Babylon, how he
navigated politics in exile and what it means for us today.
(42:15):
It's it's published this year 2025, but you can also go to the
publishers original publishing house website whip and stock.
Let me spell it because it spellit like it sounds VIP F as in
Foxtrot whip and stock, STOCK and look up Daniel Beblon.
And if you go there instead of Amazon, you can get a 40%
(42:37):
discount. If you type in this coupon code
CONF as in conference 40, that will get you 40% discount.
Conf 40 should get your discount.
Now I think you still have to pay for mailing, but it might be
cheaper than the Amazon, I'm notsure.
Yeah, yeah, So that's one. The other is I have a website.
It's a sub stack page, Mark T Clark and on there I also have a
(43:00):
list of 10, probably 8 to 10 questions for every chapter
study questions you can use as acompanion piece and some
podcasts that I've done, and this will be up there soon, I'm
sure 2 two others that I've doneone other that I will be doing
with Ken. I did with Ken Samples recently.
Yeah. And so there's other resources
that you can get. And I and I, you know, I haven't
(43:22):
written for a while because I'vebeen doing some podcasts about
the book, but I do, I try to do every bi weekly kind of takes on
modern politics from a Christianperspective.
I try to end. There's some research papers
that I've done on there for bothreasons to believe and for other
on everything from aliens and UFOs to foreign policy and
international politics. So yeah, there's a lot there.
(43:44):
You're man of many interests anda man of many talents.
Thank you. And I'll put all those links in
the show notes. Thank you so much for that code
as well. You get 40% off the book.
Can't beat that. So thank you for your
generosity. Thank you for your time, Mark.
It's been a blessing to get to know you and to get to sit down
and talk with you, and I just wish you the best moving
forward. Chad, I really appreciate you.
(44:04):
I I enjoyed this time with you and I hope your listeners enjoy
the podcast as much as I we enjoy doing it.
That's right. Thank you, Mark.
Thank you, Sir. Appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to the Rev RX Podcast.
We hope you enjoyed what you heard today, and if so, we'd
love it if you would hit that subscribe button so that you'll
never miss a new episode from us.
Also, feel free to leave us reviews and comments as we'd
(44:26):
love to hear from you. Be blessed and be the very best
you.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Rev RX podcast, where we help
you thrive in faith, family, andhealth.
My name is Chad Potts, and I'm your host.
Today's guest is an absolute force.
Doctor Mark Clark is a Marine veteran, a retired professor of
national security and political science, and the author of a
bold new book called Daniel in Babylon, How he navigated
(00:32):
politics and exile and what it means for us today.
I'm so excited for you guys to meet Doctor Clark.
This conversation covers everything from trauma to
politics to biblical masculinity, you name it.
And it's one of the most unique angles on the book of Daniel
that I've ever seen. Doctor Clark blends deep
theology with real life experience, and his message is
(00:54):
especially powerful for those ofus trying to follow Jesus and a
culture that feels more and morelike Babylon by the day.
If you've ever felt like an outsider in your own world, then
this one is for you. Let's dive in with my new
friend, Doctor Mark Clark. Mark, brother, what a privilege
(01:15):
it is to have you here on the show today.
Thank you so much for joining usfrom Sunny Colorado.
Thank you, I appreciate it. How's how's the weather there?
Oh, it's beautiful sunshine, 85°.
We're we're in good shape. OK.
All right. Sounds good.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it. It's a good opportunity.
Yes, Sir, one of my former guest, Ken samples from Reasons
to Believe put me on to your work and I have been.
(01:38):
I've been reading your book, Daniel and Babylon, and have
just really been drawn to it. You've done incredible work and
I can't wait to delve into into that with you today.
But First off, I'd just like to hear a little more about you.
Can you introduce yourself to our listeners and help us get to
know you a little better? Sure.
Thank you, Chad. So my name is Mark Clark.
(01:59):
I'm retired or what's called an emeritus professor of political
science and national security studies where I taught at Cal
State University San Bernardino in California for 30-4 years.
That was prior. Prior to that, I was in the US
Marine Corps. In fact, that's what the Lord
got a hold of me. It was while I was in the
Marines, and it was from a guy from Texas, and he and I still
(02:19):
remain friends to this day, though he lives in Arkansas.
We don't see each other that often.
We still, you know, love corresponding and communicating
and things like that. So it was interesting for me and
the Marines. You know, I I was in the middle
of the Vietnam era. The end of the Vietnam era was
down for the evacuation of Saigon.
And 50 years ago last month, April, May.
(02:40):
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's been a while, 50 years, but that's where the Lord
grabbed my attention. I found out that while I was
physically strong and physicallycourageous, I was a moral
coward. I wouldn't admit that I liked
this Bible stuff. And the Lord kind of held up a
mirror to my soul and, and it made me kind of realize, OK,
Lord, I've got to step up to theplate.
(03:00):
And so I did. But I think it was that milieu,
that environment for me that captured my attention, both my
faith and my observation of international politics from a
national security studies perspective.
And you know, I originally thought I was going to be a
pastor. And the good Lord changed my
direction a couple times and gotgot me into a PhD program in
(03:22):
Strategic Studies, landed me as a professor.
That's what where my study of Daniel began.
And just if you have a second here, I'll tell you the
background of that. I was going to ask that.
That's that's awesome. Yeah.
OK, so I was early in my career as an untenured professor, which
means you're vulnerable and be fired at the drop of a hat.
And I was running a master's program in national security
(03:44):
studies. It was the end of the Cold War.
It was afterwards, it was early 90s and I also Co hosted Hugh
Ross's show on TBN Reasons to Believe.
And at one point these two Deanspulled me aside and ripped me a
new one saying what are you doing mixing your faith and in
the university? Honestly, Chad, I got kind of
mad at first. You know, in the Marines you
either flee or you fight. Well, I'm as a Marine I.
(04:07):
Ready to fight? I was ready to fight until the
Lord reminded me of that verse where he said, blessed are you
when you're persecuted for my namesake.
And now this isn't persecution like what the early church or
church worldwide goes through, But it was enough of a shock
that I realized I needed to finda better way.
I calmed down immediately with the words of Jesus.
But then I thought, well, how will I model living in this
(04:28):
political exile, as it were, secular university that's
hostile to faith. I didn't stop anything.
I didn't stop proclaiming my faith.
I kept books on my shelf that, you know, in fact, I wrote in a
chapter in a book, professors who believe.
And so students come in knew I was Christian.
So that was no problem there. But Daniel, I, I was given an
(04:50):
opportunity to do a six week study on Daniel, how he did his
political appeals while in exilein Babylon.
And that's what began my interest.
And, and every time I've taught that series and I've taught it
over the course of 30 some odd years, I found that it's
encouraged people to look to thesovereignty of God before
politics and to see that there'ssomething much bigger going on
(05:12):
and we have to pay attention to that.
You know, it really kind of put on my heart at that time.
I really want to write a book onthis and I'll need time to do
the research to do the background and, and my wife and
I, she was gracious enough to allow me to invest in my
retirement so that I could retire early and begin that
process. So I was able to do that over
(05:32):
the course of about six years between starting the process,
doing the research, and then eventually writing the book and
finding the publisher and and doing all that.
It's a project of love, isn't it?
It's exactly, you know, labor oflove is exactly what it is.
Yes, Sir, that's. Yeah, I love that.
You know, I, I don't know if youcan see my bookshelf behind me.
I have wall to wall as far as you can see.
(05:53):
OK. I love to read love books.
And one of the things that intrigues me about you and, and
I mean no disrespect when I say this, but you know, a lot of
these biblical books, they're written by pastors are written
by people in seminaries in different places.
But I'm drawn to, and I don't know why, maybe it's because of
my background too. I'm drawn to people who aren't
(06:14):
professional theologians, but who are able to articulate the
words of ancient Scripture, approach it with an academic
approach like you have, and be able to make it modern and be
able to make it approachable forthe everyday reader.
And that's really what drew me to you.
I love that you use your, your unique background and maybe we
(06:34):
can dig into that a little bit, your unique background in
political science, national security to really approach how
you're shape how you, how you came about this project.
So you know, political science, national security, you don't
always think, OK, this guy's going to be a Bible scholar,
he's going to write a biblical based book.
But you've done just that. And I think that approach is
(06:56):
unique to you. Can you tell us a little bit
about how your background has influenced how you approach the
book? Sure, that's great.
I mean, my undergraduate degree was in history, ancient history,
so the classical civilization, Rome and, and Greece.
But along the, along my career, I, I was blessed by God.
You know, it's kind of funny. I look back and I could list 50
(07:17):
things where, you know, I had myidea what I would do and then
God would provide a different route.
Same here. Yeah, I'm sure you can identify
with that. One of the things that happened,
I, I was chair of the Departmentof Political Science as well as
graduate director for seven years.
And I was just so tired of beingdistracted from what I wanted to
do. And then I stepped down and I, I
(07:38):
got an offer. The Provost of our university
worked with six other Cal State universities and said, hey, we
want to write a grant with the director of National
intelligence of all things and create a center of academic
excellence. And I, I was brought to me.
They figured out pretty quickly they didn't know what they were
doing, which was fortunate for me, but I was sort of hesitant
because I'd been through bureaucracy.
(07:59):
I'd kind of tired of it. But I said, you know, I went to
a men's retreat and I asked the guys to pray for me on this
because I really didn't know what to do.
Within seconds, one of the guys looks up from prayer and goes,
of course, it should be a Christian that does it.
And I thought, OK, well, that's,that's the answer to that.
So I wrote this grant and $3.75 million, my first, first grant,
(08:22):
and it was over five years and it was managing 7 universities.
Now, if you know anything about universities, they're like
shepherding cats, faculty, administrators.
But it was wildly successful. It was the first multi campus
consortium. I got a subsequent grant from
the intelligence community againto extend it, make it deeper,
make it broader, then get a National Science Foundation
(08:45):
grant to actually add a master'sdegree in cybersecurity and
intelligence. And then the kind of the caps on
the smallest grant. But the one that was most
intriguing to me was by the Intelligence Advanced Research
Project activity. Now that's a mouthful, but it's
kind of like the Defense Department's DARPA, the advanced
defense stuff for intelligence. And I got to work intimately
(09:05):
with some folks at George Mason University's, a couple of other
universities, as well as my students.
I'm trying to really figure out how can we improve intelligence
analysis and I think that's whatI brought to the table here.
And I would say it most basically, I use what's called
abductive reasoning. This is Ken Samples loves this.
A lot of people get confused by it.
All it means is in in traditional science, it's an
(09:27):
inductive approach and you have proof of its positivity or
deductive. We have a series of assumptions
and and therefore these have to be true.
Abductive goes to text that's not clear and says all right,
what's the most likely explanation for this why, for
example, and this is one of my favorite of this research
project was why was Daniel if you look at Psalm 137, it ends
(09:50):
with this very gruesome wish smash the children happy as he
who smashes your children against the rocks.
It's like whoa, what's going on here?
We don't see anything like that with Daniel.
So what are those, what are those things?
How did he, how did he do it without, you know, vengeance in
mind and vindictiveness? So I look for abductive
reasoning, but then I apply thisone very specific form of
(10:13):
abductive reasoning at the end of the book that you've looked
at. And it's called an analysis of
competing hypotheses. And that's directly what the
intelligence community uses. And the reason why I did it was,
you know, while I used Daniel toguide my career path, it was, in
a sense, subjective, meaning I experienced God's blessing
because I followed the model of Daniel.
(10:34):
I saw it, I experienced it, I realized it was true.
But one of the things that I found was there's so many modern
secular scholars, liberal theologians, and even some of
the evangelical community reallybegin to doubt the authenticity
of Daniel. And so my whole reason for
putting in the analysis competing hypothesis is to say,
OK, what are all the arguments and evidence people use to
(10:57):
either support or oppose the book?
And in what I found it was it was very reliable.
There was only, you know, I don't have to get in the
technical part, but basically itwas far more reliable than the
alternative hypothesis, the alternative hypothesis that
people bring up. And they just sort of throw it
out there. It's it's fact is that it was a
second century anonymous Jew that wrote the book and it
(11:20):
wasn't a real 6th century person.
And so I found that, you know, the way I phrase it is in
personal level and in a professional level.
I find the Book of Daniel being super reliable.
It's a very good explanation of what happened, a real person
living in the 6th century who really experienced this and the
doubts that people brought up. And, and honestly, I would say
as I went through that process, doubts crept into my mind.
(11:42):
I've really had to work at, you know, is this incorrect
hypothesis. And sure enough, I think at the
end of the day, I found that it was.
Yeah, and and you, you presentedin a very clear way.
So I want to encourage listenersout there grab the book because
they're so we won't go into all the the detail here today, but
you know, it's a study in Danieland and it's of great value
(12:03):
spiritually, but it's also a great surface level approach as
to really how to go about any ofthe text.
It's almost, you know, it almosthas a component of apologetics
to it. And I really like how you've
drawn all that together. Well, thank you.
And I think there's two ways in which it's an apologetic in that
(12:24):
it's I think, you know, Daniel showed us with his behavior that
he politically political behavior, people respected him
and realized he was a religious Jew.
And he always honored the God ofhis fathers.
And they highly revered that they didn't always like it.
Because we see in chapter 6 of Daniel, you know, under Darius,
(12:45):
there's a bunch of people that are threatened by his
Jewishness, his his integrity. But I think, you know, he's a
reliable person. And so I think in a way we can
be, we can learn from his model how to live politically and be a
witness to Christ in our generation, whether it's high
political office or at the locallevel or in family or in work at
the university, secular university.
(13:07):
And then the second part of thatis the more formal apologetic,
the defense of the book of Daniel.
I think those two things, one byexample and the other an
articulated apologetic of the book of Daniel.
Yeah, it's a beautiful blend of this and very, very unique.
I haven't come across anything quite like this before.
So kudos to you for for making this your love.
Would we call it a labor of love?
Labor of love. Well, thank you.
(13:28):
I do appreciate that, Chad. Thank you, Sir.
So getting into it a little bit,just kind of zooming out.
All right, let's let's think about today with your experience
in political science and national security.
We just came out of an election season.
Those are always fun. Doesn't matter which side you,
you know, you lean towards. Aren't we just always glad to be
done with it? But there's so much, it seems
like a lot of polarization in our world today.
(13:49):
How would you describe the political climate of today?
And then can you kind of help usthink about that in terms of
Daniel's day? Is that different?
Similar What? What are the?
What's the comparison? I like that.
Well, I think the first thing isDaniel is expressly in exile,
right? He is taken from his home in
Judah, marched 900 miles to Babylon, living in a foreign
(14:12):
land, crypt of his identity, likely castrated, certainly
given the Pagan name. And yet he found a way to
thrive. I think particularly we in the
modern West, because life is comparably much better, tend to
forget that we are exiles on this earth, that we live first
for the Kingdom of heaven and then for the Kingdom we live in.
(14:33):
As you, as you know, I've servedin the US Marine Corps.
I believe it's important to serve the country and to obey
authority, but it's not the highest calling.
The highest calling is God. And so that's one part.
The second part is, you know, Jeremiah was the only prophet
that said, you're going to hear a lot of false prophecies about
what to do and you're going to, you know, they're going to tell
(14:55):
you, go ahead and rebel against Babylon.
Go ahead and do this. And his, he says in his letter
to the Exiles in Jeremiah 29, hesays, no, pray for the peace and
prosperity of Babylon. Have children, raise families,
do those things. And as Babylon prospers, so too
will you. And Habakkuk, you know, God
tells Habakkuk, who doesn't likeBabylon, hey, it's up to me to
(15:16):
judge and I will judge Babylon at the end of time.
And you have to be content with my judgement.
Well, I think the similarity to today is this in that it was
chaotic, a lot of mixed messageswith only one or two true
messages. And I think the same thing as
today, if you take all the news media and all the you know, now,
(15:36):
no offense, podcast, but but also blogs and all the other
versions, there's a cacophony and chaotic messages out there
about, you know, our political situation, who's right, who's
wrong. And one of the great things
about Daniel, what I really loved how he did this was his
great wisdom was in looking at God's Kingdom first, looking at
(15:58):
the intentions of the political leader, second in any of the
situations and then trying to meet the wishes of the king.
But that that conformed to godliness.
And he did it in a way no one has done it.
I mean, Paul does it slightly and others too, but it's most
explicit in the book of Daniel. And I think that's true for us
today. It's like just from my field,
(16:21):
you know, I look at international politics.
People say, well, what about God?
Where's God in all these wars? When you look at Syria, you look
at Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine, you look at Israel and Hamas or
Lebanon OR Iran. And what I say is, well, let's
look to God first. God, we know wants to bring and
redeem all peoples, nation, tribes and tongues.
So where's where is this happening?
(16:42):
What we find is in states, like a lot of really staunch Islamist
states, you can't penetrate withthe gospel, but if a war breaks
out and people are taken out of their country, you can reach
them in a way that you couldn't otherwise.
And Ukraine, the same thing. They're culturally one way, but
a lot of the refugees have movedout and we're reaching with the
(17:02):
gospel, and I support ministriesthat support those efforts.
Civil war, same thing in Angola,there's massive 4 / 4 million
people displaced. How do we reach them?
The same idea. Well, the same thing in this
country. Be a light, be salt.
I talk to, I have a friend, a neighbor in California who, you
know, as soon as Trump was elected, he's not a Trump fan,
you know, and he comes and he goes, tell me he's not going to
(17:24):
be a tyrant. And so we sit down and say,
look, I'm not a Trump whisperer.But here's things I would
caution you to do. And I've had friends say, you
know, that's an important ministry reaching out to people
who are Christian and talking with him.
But I also talked to people who are super pro Trump and say,
well, have you thought about this?
And let's let's let's be sensible about this.
Where's the Kingdom of God? So it's, you know, and I have my
(17:46):
political inclinations, you know, typically anyone in the
military and it's done what I'vedone has been on the
conservative spectrum. But the book of Daniel changed
how I thought about politics. It's not the most important
thing. And I think maybe that's some
big take away from the book of Daniel that I have.
I think so too. And, you know, the longer I, I
don't like to think I'm old and wise, I'm, I'm getting old, but
(18:07):
I'm not. But the longer I do this, the
more I kind of find myself in neither extreme, the more I find
myself kind of in the middle. And, and it's almost like you
see things through the lens of the Bible that is far different
from what our culture is, is kind of screaming at us.
And, you know, it's so you're, you're so right when it comes to
all right, Daniel was in exile. He was in a land where his
(18:32):
values, his faith was not accepted.
And, and we'll talk about kind of what got him there in a
minute. But isn't that kind of how a lot
of Christians feel in our world today, particularly here in
America? You know, we, we feel like we're
in a culture that is becoming increasingly hostile to the
Christian faith and, and we kindof feel like we don't belong
(18:53):
either. I would say that's true.
And I think you know, I noticed part of my conversion was
realizing out of a detachment ofMarines on a ship of about 45.
There was only one explicit Christian.
That's the guy that I that his study have it's his study of God
and and the Bible, because when intrigued me, but I think he
tells me later that first year of my relationship with him was
(19:16):
the worst year of his life, biggest testing.
And although I don't remember it, I do think that what I was
looking for is this reliable. And so we are countercultural.
You know, if you've watched the chosen at all, you at this their
symbol at the beginning is the fish swim in one way and then
1234 turn the other way. And that's really we are
countercultural. And I think one of the biggest
(19:37):
takeaways other that I have is, you know, it's been said Andrew
Breitbart, the original founder.Breitbart said politics is
downstream of culture. The culture is really changed in
America. It's wildly, you know, it's been
secular for a long time, but it's even gotten worse with
progressivism and locism and things like that.
Very anti many ways anti Christian.
(19:59):
I mean, some of it's similar to Christianity, but it's taken to
an extreme that's. Detached from that.
Yes, the extremes I think that we're seeing, yeah.
Yeah, and and, and on the right,there's a whole different
version of extremism as. Well, yeah.
But I but what I like about Daniels, he re centers me in, in
the way in which he behaved, howhe thought about it.
(20:19):
He treated people with respect. You know, first Pier 315 says we
should always be prepared to give a defense for the hope
that's in US. Yet with gentleness, respect and
a clear conscience, I find that approach is a Daniel esque
approach. That's the one I can talk to
political extremes. I don't shout, I don't do stuff
(20:40):
on social media. And there's a fundamental reason
why as you, as you, I'm sure everyone knows, but let's be
explicit about it. 80% of the content, 80% of the impact of
the content we share is non verbal cues, right?
So smile, your face, your facialexpression, your calmness on
social media, all that stripped away.
So we go all the extremes and I don't engage in debates.
(21:04):
Instead of that, I'll say let's get together and talk.
And I'm not going to argue through text with a position by
anyway. It just doesn't it doesn't it
makes things worse. It doesn't help things.
Yeah, yeah, very wise. And you know, anytime you can
sit down and talk with someone, get their point of view, see
things from their perspective, share your perspective, I think
(21:24):
that's always the way to go. I think, yeah.
And we see Daniel and we see allof the appeals and, and in the
book, again, you listeners checkit out because it's incredible.
You look at all the appeals thatDaniel had First was this appeal
about his diet. And that seems insignificant,
but nothing in the Bible is insignificant, right?
(21:45):
And so we read about that and we're like, all right, what does
that mean? And you know, that was that
wasn't a demand. He was respectful of authority.
He gave a an alternative. He took into account his
overseers fears that there was just so many ways that you can
see the wisdom of God coming out.
And let's not forget how young Daniel was, right?
(22:07):
Yeah. Teenager.
Yeah. You see, that's not, you know,
that's not a typical teenager response, but that's the wisdom
of God, I believe, coming out inhim.
Can you speak to that a little bit?
And just that wisdom that we getfrom God in how to combat those
that we may not agree with, those that maybe even, you know,
(22:28):
in a way kind of lording over usand making us exile, so to
speak. Yeah, I love that.
You know, it's, it's fascinatingbecause there's any number of
points in which Daniel could have tried to refuse anything.
He would have likely been killed.
That would have been in story. We wouldn't have the.
Book we wouldn't have Daniel. We wouldn't have Daniel, and yet
he still found a way to keep a separateness from the the
(22:51):
Babylonian elite that we're going to put through his
three-year master's degree of Babylonian administration, as I
call it. And the thing that I find
fascinating too, is that he's young, like you said, maybe 15.
We don't know exactly, but around 15, he's also in a system
where so think of it and compared to the secular system
we have today, you have to assume Darwin's right.
(23:12):
Evolution is correct. Progressive is the dream.
You know, all those things. And yet in the Babylonian
society, it was the pantheon of their gods, their dismal
religious view, their paganism, their sacrifices, their
shamanism, as it were, all this.And yet even within that, he
found ways to excel at the good things that were in that
(23:33):
education system. In fact, he was found, he and
his friends were found 10 times better in order to magnify it
better than the others. But he didn't buy into it.
And I think that's true for us today.
We can be in the secular society, take the things that
are true and ignore the evil, ignore the bad and make the best
of it and realize that, you know, even when people are
lording it, lording over us things, that's actually a golden
(23:56):
opportunity for a witness in a way that you otherwise wouldn't
get. Like I think in my first year
with my friend Todd, who I talked about in the Marines, I
didn't know I was lording it over him or being a jerk, let's
put it politely. But for whatever reason, it I
needed to see that it was a reliable test.
And perhaps many of the people that seem opposed to us are
(24:16):
waiting to see how we react or full under pressure.
Does it? Is it really, is what you're
saying really true? Is there someone superior?
Do you really have genuine peace?
Do you really trust your God forthe outcome of these sins and
so? Yeah, there there's a world
that's watching. Yeah.
And that was the case with him, too.
The way you phrase it in the book.
(24:36):
I wrote this down because I wanted to.
I thought this was great. It reminds me of Paul's words.
Be in the world, not of the world you wrote that, that
Daniel was engaged in, but separate from the society that
he was in. And I think that's what we're
talking about. We're talking about, you know,
how can we be, we have to be engaged in this world.
I mean, we escapism is not helping anybody.
(24:58):
You know, it's not like let's just endure this till we go to
heaven. No, we, we have a purpose.
We have a God-given purpose to live out.
And you know, even though this may be hostile territory, even
though this may not be in the ideal condition, we can still
thrive. And so learning that balance of
how to be engaged in the world, but still separate from the
(25:18):
world. And Daniel did that, I think
perfectly. I think that's one of the big
reasons Daniel's in our Canon isthat, you know, it shows us how
are you in the world, but not ofthe world.
Well, you, you separate yourselfand you don't do it by making
the bands and you don't do it byhaving debates.
You don't do it with a heart full of full of hate towards the
other people. You know, it can be done with a
(25:40):
gentle heart. It can be done with love, but
there's still, you know, is finding a balance between, OK,
I'm going to be a part of this whole thing because I have a
purpose here, but I'm not going to.
I'm not going to give up what I value.
I'm not going to give up my faith.
I'm not going to sell out to theculture.
(26:01):
And I'm not going to compromise what I know to be true.
I, I think that's really good, Daniel.
You know, his, his request for the vegetarian diet, like you
said, respectful. A genuine alternative would meet
the objectives of the king. The King's objectives or goals
were not to corrupt his, his staff.
It was to honor them, but also to elicit loyalty.
(26:22):
And yet he found a way to say, no, we're going to be, we're
going to be just as healthy as you want or better.
And yet we're going to be separate.
We'll be identified as being separate.
But it's done with that gentleness.
You know, I think a lot of people mistake the the
gentleness and the humility of Daniel.
Maybe not. Maybe if they really paid
attention, they wouldn't. And even at Jesus times for
(26:42):
being wuss or weak or not a fighter.
And that's like the furthest thing from the truth because we
do live in this world. It is, you know, worldliness is
sinfulness. Yes.
Human government is really a concession to the sin we see
from the fall. The temptation is for all of us
to engage in politics by worldlymeans, which is shout them down,
(27:06):
out, argue, umm, whatever, yell,let them scream at them,
separate from them and that doesno good.
That's not salt and light. That doesn't change the culture.
The culture. Again, politics is downstream
from culture. If we really want to change
culture, we change one person ata time by seeing that
gentleness, that respectfulness and yet firm conviction.
(27:26):
Daniel was willing to die for his faith on 2 occasions.
The first one is the is the appeal for a vegetarian diet.
The second one is in under Dryas's court.
He was descent into the lion's den.
He was not going to come. And his three friends in Daniel
chapter 3 said, no, we're not going to worship Nebuchadnezzar
in this idol. There's no, that's not weak,
that's very strong, but it's very calm, very respectful.
(27:50):
So I think, you know, we have, we have to disabuse our notion
that we have to fight by worldlymeans and we ought to take
stock. What are those?
What are those worldly means we're looking at?
Well, it's again, it's argument,it's hatred, it's separation,
it's pox on your house. And we've seen that does no
good. It's actually making things
worse. But it's that gentleness, that
respect, that willingness to engage one-on-one or in smaller
(28:12):
groups, that can change people'shearts in a way that arguments
never, will never have. And you know, look at the fruit
of those things, you know, what's the fruit of the, the
heated arguments and all that? That's division.
You know, that's not from God, but leading by example and using
the phrase that comes to mind isa meekness.
And when I think about Daniel, but it's a Christ like quality.
(28:33):
Christ was meek. And one of the ways I teach
meekness is its power under control.
So Jesus, of course, had all thepower in the world, right?
He's God. He's he's man, but he's God.
He's, you know, 100% both. And he had all, I mean, he had
all the power. They're his fingertips at his
disposal. But he surrendered that power
(28:54):
for the greater good. You know, he, he, he could have
called, the scripture says he could have called legions of
angels to come save him. You know, he didn't need Peter
to, to cut the guy's ear off, right?
That's fighting back with the means of the, with the ways of
the world. But he kept that power under
control in order to accomplish the Father's will.
And so I love that because Jesushimself, like Daniel, had a
(29:17):
clear goal. His clear goal was to go to the
cross and die. In First Corinthians 2, Paul
tells us that it was a mystery what was going to happen.
Had the rulers of this age knownwhat was going to happen, they
would not have crucified our Lord of glory.
So Jesus kept things hidden until the right time and the
right place so that he could accomplish his mission.
Fortunately, our mission is not that tough, although it can be
(29:39):
for some people. You know, you can be beheaded.
A lot of Christians have been martyred in the past.
It's to go out and make disciples around the world of
out of every nation, tribe and tongue and then the end will
come. For Daniel, it was slightly
different. It was, I think Isaiah 49 six,
and it says this and it's reallyJudah's kind of Great
Commission, but also a description of what Jesus was
(30:02):
going to do. But in particular, Daniel took
at the heart. And that is, it is too small a
thing for you to be my servant, to restore the tribe of Jacob
and bring back the remnant I have kept of Israel.
And I will make you a light to the Gentiles so that my
salvation will spread across theearth.
And Daniel did that in spades. I mean, he was the one that did
(30:22):
the prayer of repentance and restoration in Daniel Chapter 9.
He's the one that got Osiris. Probably.
We prompted Cyrus to enact Azidik a year or two ahead of
schedule. Ahead of the Jeremiah's
prophecy. Everyone recognized that he
served the God of heaven. Even if they didn't, they didn't
understand it or didn't follow him.
So he had a mission. And I think we have missions
too, and we have to keep that goal in mind.
(30:44):
I think that if we subordinate our behavior to God's Kingdom
and the goals that He has for usand whatever the way they
manifest. I mean, to me it was being that
representative and doing the best I could as a professor,
being a good instructor, being agood, but also being there for
students who needed to talk about things outside of that.
And then also in church and in other places and eventually this
(31:04):
book, what are our missions? And it's, you know, a mom taking
care of children, raising them up in the way they should go.
There's a lot of places in whichwe have a purpose and a mission
that's much more important than fighting political battles that
we don't win. We tend not to win anyway.
Absolutely. And I love the way that you've
worded this whole thing. Is that OK, Politics are
important because it's, you know, it's how our world is
(31:25):
shaped. And, you know, so we're not
saying be, you know, you're not saying get out of that.
We're not saying don't care about that, but we're saying
keep the right priorities. It's not as important as God.
It's not as important as the Kingdom of God.
And in a lot of ways, I think that believers find themselves
with a foot in both worlds. We've, you know, we've got a
foot in the Kingdom of God and foot in this world.
(31:46):
And sometimes it's hard to figure out how to navigate that.
And so this book is incredibly helpful, in my opinion, for
really showing us what it looks like to find that balance in a
life that thrives. One of the things I'd like to
kind of not close with because I'm not done but kind of head
that way with is and this just came to me.
But I'm reminded you talk a lot about trauma in the book,
(32:08):
traumatic events. And and I'd like for you to to
speak on that a little bit aboutthere's there's four major and
you covered them briefly a minute ago, but four major
events that happened in his lifethat was traumatic in that
initial like taking him to exile.
And some, you know, what we think most likely happened to
him and how it's a wonder. It's it's a miracle that he did
(32:28):
not end up with something like aPTSD, what we now call as PTSD,
like the psalmist that you quoted earlier, just like bash
all their children's heads. You know, he didn't have that
revenge. He didn't have this entrapment
into the past. And that's a whole different
rabbit trail that we can, we could geek out about that later,
I'm sure, especially with your background and in my background
(32:50):
too. But what what I'm trying to get
to is this, there seems to be this thread in Scripture where
God uses traumatic events in order to accomplish his his will
in order to progress the Kingdomof God.
And in other words, what we're saying is that God turns what
the enemy made for evil, intended for evil, and turns
(33:14):
them for good. So if you think about Daniel
minding his own business, you know, a Hebrew, a Jew, devout
guy, all of a sudden his world is appended and takes a sudden
shift. And I think a lot of times we
read this casually and we don't put ourselves in his sandals as
(33:36):
you write and and really understand what he went through.
So maybe in the rest of our timetogether, let's talk about
putting ourselves in his sandals.
What might that have looked like?
How might look at the traumatic events that most likely happened
in his life, but then let's talkabout the good that came from
it. You know, a lot of times we, a
lot of my listeners, and we've all lived this to where there's
(33:59):
traumatic events that happened in our lives and we wonder why
me or we wonder, where's God? And we wonder, well, without
saying this, sometimes we like, well, if God was good, he
wouldn't let this happen. But what we see is that number
one, God is sovereign. And that's a whole different
conversation too. But he also there, there's a
balance there with our free will, but he also has the
(34:21):
ability because he is sovereign,he has the ability to redeem, he
has the ability to reconcile, and he has the ability to turn
something awful into something good.
Can we can we steer there a little bit with the rest of our
time together? Sure, absolutely.
So with Daniel, you know, I, we mentioned it briefly, he was
(34:42):
probably 15. It's interesting, Isaiah and
Isaiah 39, Zakiah, the king of 100 years before, foolishly
let's at the time the smaller Babylonian invoice come in and
see the temple treasury. And Isaiah, God is mad and tells
them, look, because of what you have done, some of your own
(35:03):
defendant descendants, your own royal blood will be taken as
captives and made eunuchs in thecourt of Babylon.
That was 100 years before. Yeah.
And your temple treasury going to be taken.
And though both those things happen during that period of
time. Now did did this dawn on Daniel
at that time? We don't know.
He doesn't talk about it. Was he a royal descendant of
Hezekiah? If so, he might have been more
privileged, but he was taken. He and his three friends were
(35:26):
taken out of their home, their ability to worship.
They were taken and marched probably 900 miles.
I talked about the route that itwas traditional in the trade in
that time. Yeah, we're not talking about,
you know, a 2 day journey, you know?
Three to four months, Yeah, three to four months.
And there's a lot of walking that's going to happen.
And then he gets there and he's given and maybe along the way
he's given a Pagan name, you know, Beltagazzar and and it's,
(35:49):
you know, God, a Marduk. It's some kind of protection of
Marduk's like. And Daniel was sort of a God,
you know, it's he's taken give taking his real name and given
this false name. But that's part of empires.
Empires and political societies always try to convert your
loyalty to them. And names were a big deal.
You know, you look at the the names of of some of the biblical
(36:09):
figures and like they were chosen on purpose, they were
chosen for a reason. So changing a name is is
significant. That happened a few times by
God, and it also happened a couple times by it was it was
common practice with empires, Yeah.
Yeah, So he's stripped of his family, his local, you know,
community, his, his ability to worship God at the temple.
That's gone. He's given a Pagan name.
(36:30):
And he was likely, in fact, all the early Jewish and Christian
scholars believed he was emasculated.
So he's made a eunuch, which makes, you know, the sense.
They didn't want anyone, particularly foreigners, to
mingle with the King's harem or anything in in a bad way.
And, and the way they did it waspretty brutal.
I mean, they didn't use anesthesia.
They crushed the testes or cut them off.
I mean, just brutal way in whichthis occurred.
(36:51):
Daniel doesn't talk about it forobvious reasons.
To a Jew, a righteous Jew, you know, having siren children
would be really important. Having offspring and longevity
and a name would be important. You couldn't worship in the
assembly. There's a lot of prohibitions
against castrated males and animals from being used in
ritual worship. So Daniel was separated not just
physically, but culturally, spiritually, everything from his
(37:15):
life at a very young age. And yet I think somewhere he
picks up. You know, I talked a little bit
about a potential resolution, how he might have resolved it,
having that close community of three friends and praying
together and talking. They had a shared experience of
captivity. They were, they righteously
followed God and they prayed together.
That was one of the key things. Walking probably helped a lot
(37:36):
too. That's that bilateral
stimulation that can help you reorganize your brain.
So there's a lot of ways in which it could have been that
God used the events, the naturalthings, what one scholar, Ken
Keithley, calls hypernaturalism,Not supernatural, not natural,
but in between, where God's Providence uses the very things
that we go through, horrific as they are, to produce something
(37:57):
in us that will become everlasting glory for us, which
is an amazing thing. And so Daniel, yeah, he gets
there. He decides, I think he commits
along the way, if not before to God's Kingdom purposes following
Isaiah 49, six and then is and he's also gifted.
We see that he's gifted, but hisgifting doesn't come out until
(38:17):
he's under test, under pressure.And his reliance of on God was
what allowed him to express those get that giftedness that
God gave him because he was so willing to follow God in these
circumstances. And you know, it's interesting,
I don't talk about this in the book, but I've read elsewhere
where I did a broad webinar on this with a largely Jewish
scholarly community. And one of the questions that I
(38:39):
got was really good by Shmuel. He said, do you think we Jews
should live like Daniel did in the diaspora, the spread that we
are outside of Israel? And I said you could do worse
than the book of Daniel. And the reason why I say that is
historically, we know for example, the Koreans under
Japanese occupation from the 30sthrough World War 2, they relied
heavily on Daniel to survive andthrive in that very hostile,
(39:03):
noxious environment, horrible environment.
And so did a lot of Manchurian Chinese people follow that were
Christian followed Daniel. Interesting.
Yeah, people been drawing on this for ages.
They have, and it's fascinating you think of it.
We would not have had the book of Daniel had he not done this.
And that Book of Daniel has shaped the way generations have
thought about following God in hostile cultures, political
(39:27):
cultures. And I'm just encouraged by not
only the work you've done, but just in one of the ways that you
worded it, something along the lines of it's a coupling.
It's a coupling of is giftednesswith the wisdom of God.
Each and everyone of us has a giftedness.
You may not realize it yet or maybe you haven't fully tapped
(39:48):
into it, but you are gifted by God to do something and that
that begins to be part of your purpose.
What if we coupled that giftedness with the wisdom of
God man, What could he do? And and you know what, when we
when we come across traumatic things in our life and we begin
to see. Our, our world may be crumbling,
(40:10):
the diagnosis, the the telephonecall or whatever the case may
be. A lot of times we're we're
looking for hope and Daniel gives us that hope in that even
in, you know, the entire world shaking event that had the
potential to do completely traumatize him forever, keep him
(40:31):
stuck in that past. God was with him.
We had the song today that I love Another in the fire comes
from the same same story. There's another in the fire.
He's with him. Daniel tunes in to God and he
trusts God and he follows God closely and he doesn't betray
(40:52):
God in the midst of all of this.And and God leads him to not
only success and thriving in hislife, but for generations to
come. Talk about a legacy.
God took suffering and turned itinto a legacy that people
thousands of years later are still looking to to show that
(41:13):
God still shows up in the tough times.
Isaiah 56 has a passage on eunuchs.
Let not the dry tree say, you know, I have no legacy.
If you follow me and stay humbleand do my Sabbaths, I will give
you a legacy that will not be cut off.
And it's, it's a very interesting imagery of what he
went through, the castration. There's a bigger legacy that can
(41:34):
be had without even children, which is amazing because, you
know, we don't, my wife and I don't have children, but we have
influence. We have God children and
friends, children's and young adults and, and youth that we've
mentored. There's a legacy that can happen
by God that that doesn't depend on physical progeny and and
those are important things. Yeah, brings hope to all of us.
(41:55):
And so, Mark, you're an inspiration.
I've loved this conversation. One of the favorites, One of my
favorites I've had. And can you tell my listeners
where to find out more about you, where to find out more
about the book and and what you're doing?
Sure and so the book can be found on Amazon.
It's you can just go type in Daniel and Babylon, how he
navigated politics in exile and what it means for us today.
(42:15):
It's it's published this year 2025, but you can also go to the
publishers original publishing house website whip and stock.
Let me spell it because it spellit like it sounds VIP F as in
Foxtrot whip and stock, STOCK and look up Daniel Beblon.
And if you go there instead of Amazon, you can get a 40%
(42:37):
discount. If you type in this coupon code
CONF as in conference 40, that will get you 40% discount.
Conf 40 should get your discount.
Now I think you still have to pay for mailing, but it might be
cheaper than the Amazon, I'm notsure.
Yeah, yeah, So that's one. The other is I have a website.
It's a sub stack page, Mark T Clark and on there I also have a
(43:00):
list of 10, probably 8 to 10 questions for every chapter
study questions you can use as acompanion piece and some
podcasts that I've done, and this will be up there soon, I'm
sure 2 two others that I've doneone other that I will be doing
with Ken. I did with Ken Samples recently.
Yeah. And so there's other resources
that you can get. And I and I, you know, I haven't
(43:22):
written for a while because I'vebeen doing some podcasts about
the book, but I do, I try to do every bi weekly kind of takes on
modern politics from a Christianperspective.
I try to end. There's some research papers
that I've done on there for bothreasons to believe and for other
on everything from aliens and UFOs to foreign policy and
international politics. So yeah, there's a lot there.
(43:44):
You're man of many interests anda man of many talents.
Thank you. And I'll put all those links in
the show notes. Thank you so much for that code
as well. You get 40% off the book.
Can't beat that. So thank you for your
generosity. Thank you for your time, Mark.
It's been a blessing to get to know you and to get to sit down
and talk with you, and I just wish you the best moving
forward. Chad, I really appreciate you.
(44:04):
I I enjoyed this time with you and I hope your listeners enjoy
the podcast as much as I we enjoy doing it.
That's right. Thank you, Mark.
Thank you, Sir. Appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to the Rev RX Podcast.
We hope you enjoyed what you heard today, and if so, we'd
love it if you would hit that subscribe button so that you'll
never miss a new episode from us.
Also, feel free to leave us reviews and comments as we'd
(44:26):
love to hear from you. Be blessed and be the very best
you.
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