Daniel is Speechless (Daniel 10:15-21)

Daniel’s Awe Before the Angelic Messenger

So, we'll start, let's open up by reading chapter 10, verses 10, through the end of the chapter. I hope to finish this chapter and get at least the introduction to chapter 11 started today. Although we're in no hurry, we're on no timetable.

We have time until the Lord returns, so, which according to this book might be any minute. Chapter 10 of Daniel, verse 10, page 1157. Then behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees, and he said to me, O Daniel, man of high esteem, understand the words that I am about to tell you and stand upright, for I have now been sent to you, and when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling.

Then he said to me, Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words.

But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for 21 days. Then behold, Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to give you an understanding of what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision pertains to the days yet future.

And when he had spoken to me according to these words, I turned my face toward the ground and became speechless. And behold, one who resembled a human being was touching my lips. Then I opened my mouth and spoke and said to him who was standing before me, O my Lord, as a result of the vision, anguish has come upon me, and I have retained no strength.

For how can such a servant of my Lord talk with such as my Lord? As for me, there remains just now no strength in me, nor has any breath been left in me. Then this one with human appearance touched me again and strengthened me.

And he said, O man of high esteem, do not be afraid. Peace be with you. Take courage and be courageous. Now as soon as he spoke to me, I received strength and said, May my Lord speak for you have strengthened me.

Then he said, Do you understand why I came to you? But I shall now return to fight against the prince of Persia. So I'm going forth and behold, the prince of Greece is about to come. However, I will tell you what is inscribed in the writing of truth.

Yet there is none who stands firmly with me against these forces except Michael, your prince. So remember the context. We're dealing with an appearance of a messenger from heaven, an angel, who is imparting to Daniel words about the fairly near future within a few hundred years and the very distant future within, well, what has turned out to be at least thousands of years now.

And Daniel, as a man of God and a man of humility, is having trouble facing this messenger, listening to him, hearing him because it just strikes not necessarily fear, but he just he doesn't feel worthy.

And that should speak to us. That should be how we come before the word of God every time we read it. We're really not worthy of it, but he gave it to us. And it's a wondrous thing. And so we ended last week with verse 14,.

Now I have come to give you an understanding of what will happen to your people in the latter days. And as we discussed that the latter days was used 14 times in the Old Testament and generally refers to the closing times of history, always to the closing time of a period it's discussing, but in prophetic utterances, it's referring to the closing times of history.

And Daniel had such concern for his people that he spent three weeks in prayer, and that prayer prepared him. In that prayer, God prepared him to be ready to receive this message. And we will see later on in this book that some of it remains a mystery to Daniel and will remain a mystery until the times happen.

And those who are the call, the elect of God during those times will see and understand. But for now, Daniel is receiving this information and he has to be continually strengthened and encouraged because even as a man of God, facing and listening to an emissary directly from Jehovah, from Yahweh, is a hard spectacle.

Humility Before Truth and the Difficulty of Claiming Ultimate Truth

So then he says in verse 15,. When he had spoken to me according to these words, I turned my face toward the ground and became speechless. This is another, he simply turned his, it's likely that he simply turned his face to the ground in astonishment and pain, knowing that more was coming about the great tribulations that Israel was going to have to face to purge her of all of her false beliefs about the Messiah and hatred of the Messiah later on.

More was coming about the great tribulation that Israel would face in the near future and in the far future. It is likely he looked at the angel and was again stunned and struck by the improbability of one so mighty speaking to him.

When was the last time you heard someone who claims to have heard it from an angel speaking those tones? It is so improbable that he would even come to me. No, it's actually, if I spit on this cloth and send it to you in the mail and you send it back, will it be a seed?

Just improbable silly things that come from the mouths of these false teachers today. Daniel was astonished and couldn't stand up, and he was a true man of God, and he was humbled again here, struck by the improbability, as I said, of one so mighty speaking to him.

And he humbled himself, looking down. Also at this point, the angel, maybe, now this is my speculation, this is not scripture. Maybe the angel had possibly explained to Daniel the battle that had taken place for three weeks, and so this was part of the cause for Daniel's astonishment.

Remember, the prayer was answered, Daniel's prayer was answered, an emissary was sent and was in battle for three weeks before Michael came and helped win the battle and free him to come speak to Daniel.

So it could have been that. That's just my speculation, but that's as far as I take it. I'm not going to write any science fiction on it. Interestingly enough, when it comes to the word humility, and Daniel was used greatly, and I believe partly greatly because of his humility.

One man said this, he said, there's no limit to what amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit. And Daniel wrote this book, and he was a man who didn't care who got the credit. He wanted God to be glorified.

And so then he says in verse 16, he says, and behold, one who resembled a human being was touching my lips. Then I opened my mouth and spoke and said to him who was standing before me, oh my Lord, as a result of the vision, anguish has come upon me and I have retained no strength.

Still struggling, still somewhat terrified of this emissary. He was likely referring to the same angel. This angel messenger had already touched him once, and so this seems to be a continuation of the interchange.

He was looking down and would not have seen the angel reach out to touch him, giving him the strength to talk. Immediately Daniel explains, or at least he tells the angel the reason for some of his astonishment and difficulty.

He does not feel worthy of who he is talking to. And this isn't even Yahweh. Some believe it is a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. I personally believe it's an angel. That's my view of this section.

But even that, even that, Daniel doesn't feel worthy of even being spoken to by this emissary. And so he does not feel worthy, and his appellation here, my Lord, is a designation of respect, not divinity.

Humility. One word about humility, too. It's been my observation. I did a study on Ben Franklin years ago. And I'm not going to replicate it this morning, but he, for all of his faults, he had some interesting things to say, and he was an interesting man.

He actually did an evaluation of character qualities, and he discovered that you couldn't evaluate your own humility. Yeah, I was pretty humble today. What do you think? On a scale of 1 to 10, you know, never mind.

It's been my observation that humility makes better teachers. It makes better believers. It makes better workers. It makes better relationships within the church and within life. When we can accept our own frailty and our own imperfections and live with them and not impose our view on other people, when we're humble with them, they're much more likely to be the kind of friends that we ought to have.

And so Daniel was a humble man. It keeps shining through this section of Scripture that he was a humble man, and this is one of the reasons that God imparted this message to him. So then he says again in 17, verse 17, are there any questions?

Now we're not hurrying through things. On verses 14, 15, and 16. Yes. So how do you broach the difficulty between being humble and claiming that you have ultimate truth? Is that kind of what you're...yeah.

It's one thing...so to understand and believe that the Bible is absolutely, meticulously, specifically true about everything, and still being humble doesn't...there's no problem. There's no problem between the two.

It's how we present the information that we have that is the quality of humility that we display. If you walk up to somebody and say, you're going to hell, you need the Bible, and if you don't listen to what I say right now, it's all over for you but the shouting.

That's not very humble. And that's okay. They can believe wrong things about other stuff too. There are situations where if you're humble in bringing the gospel to people, which is the ultimate truth, and you are firm in your conviction that it's truth, but you're kind, considerate, and respectful in the conversation, they can just be wrong.

I know that sounds arrogant, and I struggle with that. I'm an arrogant jerk sometimes. That's what communicates humility or not, is your attitude. Daniel, his communication of humility was much of his physical expression.

His head down, just unable to look up, those kinds of things, those are communicating something to this angel. So they knew he was a man of God, they knew he was a humble man of God. Humility is often communicated not just in our words but in our attitude, actually mostly communicated in our attitude and in our facial expressions, our gestures, those things like that.

I believe there's a number of studies that say that communication is 75 physical and 25 verbal or 80%, or pick your number, 42 .785 of all statistics are made up on the spot anyway. But most of communication is physical, it's what you see in the person.

You can tell when you come home at night, when a man comes home and something has not been right between he and his wife, and you walk in the room, she doesn't have to say anything, does she? The communication is palpable, can be, and that's as it should be.

And so you can be absolutely right about something, I believe, and still be humble about it. You're not going to force it on the other person, but you are going to offer it to them for their consideration.

And that's probably the difference. Does that help? And yes, Rick, yes, Paul did that. Yeah, holier than thou, holier than thou, right. Yeah, if you put it to them in your own frailty, yes, that's a good way of wording it, yeah.

Any other questions? For how can such a servant of my Lord talk with such as my Lord? As for me, there remains just now no strength in me, nor has any breath been left in me. So he told the angel, you're shaking me up, this is very difficult.

So he reiterates how difficult it is for him to have this interchange with such a majestic being. He has no strength, and it's even difficult to breathe. The sense here is that how can a regular human being even consider carrying on a conversation with such a majestic being sent directly from Yahweh?

To be close is to be frightened. To hear is to be terrified. And to be responsible for communicating it to men is astounding, astonishing, and in its own way, frightening. To be fully aware of one's human frailties is an attribute of a godly person, and Daniel is very aware of his sinfulness, and especially in this instance, his lack of strength.

And he communicates it to the angel. It's okay to be weak. It's okay to be frightened. I've heard it said that courage isn't just being brave, it's doing what you should do, even when you're terrified.

And that's what Daniel does here. And he brings us this word, even though he was terrified. We flatter ourselves today, we fool ourselves into thinking that the average person would be able to have a normal conversation with a messenger from Yahweh.

It is impossible that those who tout an intimate relationship with angelic beings today are on par with Daniel, and yet he could hardly carry on a normal conversation because of fear, apprehension, and humility.

What happens in the angelic realm is, for whatever reason, concealed, for the most part, from human view. And this is by the sovereign action of God. Suffice it to say that he is making sure, God is making sure, that battle is being done on our behalf in the spiritual realm.

Make more of it than that, and you're setting yourself up for science fiction doctrine. But we know, based on what is said here, that there is a battle going on in the spiritual realm, and God is attending to it.

Do you see anywhere where he calls us to pull a sword and stab an angel? I've looked. Because that would be cool. It's not there. He will do that battle. Ours is to do battle here, humbly. Verse 18, then this one with human appearance touched me again and strengthened me.

This same angel touches Daniel for the third time. The first touch gave him strength to rise from the ground. The second enables him to speak. And then the third touch and final touch strengthens him to speak and to continue.

This is very similar, interestingly enough, to the strengthening of the Lord Jesus Christ that he received from the angels in the Garden of Gethsemane. And that's in Luke 22. I'd like to read that for you.

Verses 40 through 43. When he arrived at the place, he said to them, Pray that you may not enter into temptation, speaking to his disciples. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and began to pray, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.

Now an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. This was the most terrifying responsibility that was ever placed on a man in the history of the universe. And he needed strength from an angel.

He had to have it. And where did that strength come from? Did it come from the angel himself? No, it came from God. The angel communicated, just as he communicated the words, he communicated and brought the strength that Daniel and that Jesus needed.

Of course, it is God himself strengthening Daniel through the agency of the angel. It must be noted that some have supposed several angels in this interchange with Daniel, and there's no reason that couldn't be true.

It's my view that it's basically one. The way Daniel speaks of the angel in these two verses, though, does suggest that they are linked together to the previous appearances. It's my intimation. But if it was more than one angel, that's fine too.

That's not a problem. So any questions about verse 18? Verse 19, he said, O man of high esteem. Look how he keeps referring to Daniel. Loved of God, high esteem. Do not be afraid. Peace be with you. Take courage and be courageous.

Now, as soon as he spoke to me, Daniel says, I received strength and said, May my Lord speak for you have strengthened me. This is important stuff. And when you're frightened, when you're terrified, so the angel encourages Daniel not to have any fear.

It has been pointed out that fear is the opposite of peace. That's one of the things that's the opposite of. And we do not take instruction well when we are terrified, nor do we remember well. Sometimes we remember only that aspect of an encounter that was terrifying, that was fearful.

The angel warns Daniel to be calm and receptive. Warns is probably too strong. Encourages Daniel to be calm and receptive. Here, the angel adds the words. He says it. Peace be with you. Peace be to you.

He does also note that Daniel will have to be courageous to hear more. Here, Daniel does receive the strength he needs. In fact, the idea here is that he felt himself strengthened. He says, I receive strength.

I receive strength. And so we see that through these last few verses, that Daniel's strength returns step by step. Now he is in a position to respond properly to the angelic messenger. And then we'll go to verse 20, and then I'll see if there's any questions.

The Angel’s Spiritual Warfare and the Strengthening of Daniel

Verse 20, he said, the angel, do you understand why I came to you? But I shall now return to fight against the prince of Persia, so I'm going forth, and behold, the prince of Greece is about to come. The angel asked the rhetorical question, do you understand why I came to you, reminding Daniel of the overall reason for this visit from an angelic being.

The purpose was to communicate to Daniel that there were numerous events, momentous events coming up in the near future and in the far future. The need to strengthen Daniel regularly as part of the angel's ministry to Daniel was necessary in order for him to be able to fully understand as much as possible the coming events.

So this angel had just won a battle with the demonic prince of Persia. He had to return and continue the battle because demonic powers never rest. Satan never rests, and neither can we, by the way, as a byproduct of that.

The phrase, I am going forth, is used in 2 Kings of one going into combat in the same manner as it is used here. Some have assumed that the angelic reference to the prince of Greece is a reference to Alexander the Great.

It is actually a reference to the demon prince that will be over the kingdom of Greece when it supersedes Persia. The angel is again referring to the sequence that has been posited throughout Daniel. Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome.

Regarding the dates, this angel would continue fighting against the Persian evil prince until about 331 BC when Alexander would conquer that Persian empire. Both of these empires are mentioned in the next chapter and thus the angel prepares Daniel for that information.

Questions, comments? Yes? I know it doesn't come from the Bible. I don't know it. Peter? Okay. So there are some of the messengers of God that do have wings. I forgot about that. Yeah. And they hover and they cover.

Right. So, but this is, you're right, this angel is referenced as resembling a human. Anybody in here got wings? I don't want to see them if you do. Any other questions? Yes. I think they're both different ways of saying the same thing.

So he's receiving it from God. Any strength we receive is from God. I think the angel might have implicitly been directing him to, we're supposed to pray at all times. Okay, now I'm imputing this on this scripture.

I believe Daniel was probably in prayer at all times while this whole, through this whole encounter. And part of that prayer would have been, I know if it would have been, Lord, help me out here. I wouldn't have been eloquent like Daniel would have been.

Just, you know, can I get back up finally? You know, get off my knees. And so that strength, I believe the prayer would have been receiving, the same thing as receiving the strength from Jehovah. So he didn't get it from the angel.

He got it from God. Does that help? Okay. Verse 21. And here's how we'll end this chapter, which probably is a poor ending place, and we'll talk about that. However, I will tell you what is inscribed in the writing of truth, yet there is no one who stands firmly with me against these forces except Michael, your prince.

And then if you look at verse 11, chapter 11, verse 1, the word and. And in the first year of Darius the Mede, I arose to be an encouragement and a protection for him. That's actually the end of this chapter, but it was split at 21, so we'll end there.

So the angel does intend to continue to relate to Daniel God's message. The one that God had committed to the writing of truth, quote unquote. This again implies overtly the sovereignty of God over history.

What is coming, what is coming in the future has been written down because it was perfectly certain in the mind of Yahweh. I said something last week, I think. What we call prophecy is just what God thinks.

Because he sees it all. We have to call it prophecy in future because we live in a snapshot of time. God lives sovereignly eternal over everything. He sees the beginning from the end, the middle, the sides, you name it.

And so the writings of truth are what God is talking about or what that angel is talking about here. It has been posited that the Bible is but one record of the entire writing of truth. And thus this descriptive phrase would likely include both the Bible and possibly other records that God has created.

The only record we have, however, is the word of God. And that is our standard. That is our place of refuge. That is our information receptacle or provider. The emphasis on the word truth was intended to give Daniel assurance that this is all true.

So the angel emphasized that. What was to come will work out exactly as the sovereign God of the universe has prescribed, has planned. And those writings of truth are his, and they are perfect. We have his writing of truth, the word of God, the Bible.

Daniel was reminded that this emissary was able to call on Michael at any time, apparently, for help. The behind-the-scenes warfare was real, and the prince of Israel, Michael, continued to wage war against those who were waging war against Israel in the spiritual realm.

And thus we have an entire chapter that prepares Daniel for what was to come in what is recorded in the remaining chapters of Daniel, chapters 11 and chapter 12. He dates it to the third year of Cyrus.

He relates his preparation to receive the message and the coming of the messenger. He typically, as a true prophet of God, records his interaction with the emissary and shows his weakness and his need to be strengthened by Yahweh.

He never loses heart, even though he was terrified. And finally, he is able to have a direct conversation with the emissary from Yahweh and was prepared for the main message to come. So the next section, chapter 11, is what there are about three or four, depending on the expositor, three or four chapters of Daniel that people focus on.

To my thinking, much to their loss, the entire book of Daniel is marvelous. But you have to admit, you know, the climax of the movie is usually the most exciting part. And here's where we're coming. We're coming into the climax of Daniel's revelation, chapter 11 and chapter 12, especially chapter 11.

And there is so much here and I am so inadequate. So help me. Don't ask hard questions. No, I'm just kidding. Let's go ahead and read chapter 11. And we'll start there and then we'll get an introduction to the chapter.

The Kings of Persia and Greece in Daniel 11

If I had a time this better, we would have ended chapter 10 at 9 or 10, 15. But I got too excited. Chapter 11. And in the first year of Darius the Mede, I arose to be an encouragement. And that should have been the end of chapter 10, but neither here nor there, I guess.

And an encouragement and a protection for him. And now I will tell you the truth. Behold, three more kings are going to arise in Persia. Then a fourth will gain far more riches than all of them. As soon as he becomes strong through his riches, he will arouse the whole empire against the realm of Greece.

And a mighty king will arise and he will rule with great authority and do as he pleases. But as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom will be broken up and parceled out toward the four points of the compass, though not to his own descendants, nor according to his authority, which he wielded.

For his sovereignty will be uprooted and given to others besides them. We're going to read through verse 13 because we're never going to get that far today. So we'll read through verse 13 and then we'll plunge into the introduction.

Verse five. Then the king of the south will grow strong along with one of his princes who will gain ascendancy over him and obtain dominion. His dominion will be a great dominion indeed. Then and after some years they will form an alliance and the daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to carry out a peaceful arrangement.

But she will not retain her position of power, nor will he remain with his power. But she will be given up along with those who brought her in and the one who sired her as well as he who supported her in those times.

But out of but one of those one of the descendants of her line will arise in his place and he will come against their army and entry the forces, the fortress of the king of the north, and he will deal with them and display great strength.

And also their gods with their metal images and their precious vessels of silver and gold. He will take into captivity to Egypt. And he on his part will refrain from attacking the king of the north for some years.

Then the latter will enter the realm of the king of the south but will return to his own land. Verse nine will end there. So chapter 11 begins with a verse that properly should have been given in the last chapter.

But because it has a date, those who created the chapter divisions thought it important to let this start a new thought process. But the fact is, verse one finishes the statement of the angel in 1021.

The angel refers to an incident that took place that took part in two years before this time in history. Leon Wood in his commentary summarizes it this way. He says the phrase was to call attention to Daniel's visitor as having gone also to Michael's aid at one time in the past.

In other words, the two mighty beings held a mutual assistance arrangement, each helping the other as he had particular need. The word for encouragement is a Hebrew particle, it's a hyphal particle. Meaning it's something that causes action, expresses the causative action.

Meaning one causing to be strong. The word for protection is a noun. Daniel's visitor had supplied qualities of both concepts for Michael two years before, which means at the general time of the Jews' return to Judah under Shesh Bazar, which would be in Ezra chapter 1, verses 1 through 11.

Michael, wanting this return to be effected, had apparently encountered difficulty in influencing Darius, and to that end, Daniel's visitor had come to his aid. Thus it comes to be known that Darius Cyrus' decision to let the Jews go had been accomplished by God working through these two high angels.

Working behind the scenes. And it may be concluded that whenever such decisions are made in high places relative to God's people, God's angels may well be involved in bringing about the desired result.

Let me finish that with, they don't need our help. They don't need our help. And it is here in this chapter where we will begin to connect the dots of providence that God used to create in the minds of even heathen kings, like Darius Cyrus, a sense of responsibility and even help toward the Jews, towards Israel.

Darius himself saw Daniel protected from the lions by the hand of God. It had to just shake him up. Lions don't do that. They eat things. What's wrong with my lions? And I'm not talking about Detroit.

God, it is no wonder then that some of his first proclamations, Darius, was to allow the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild it. This chapter naturally divides into two sections. Verses 1 through 35 treat the major roles or the major rules of the Persian kings, the Persian empire, and then give great detail regarding the third empire following Alexander the Great through Antiochus Epiphanes, which is in 175 to 164 BC.

Chapter 11 gives due regard to those Gentile rulers who impacted the Jewish nation. Then the section of time from Antiochus Epiphanes to the end times is skipped over with no reference to the church age.

The second section, verses 36 through 45, focuses on the last Gentile ruler who will be in power when Christ returns, the Antichrist. So as we read through chapter 11, there will be references to kings of the north and south.

So online, I think if you want access to this, there's a PDF online of the entire PowerPoint. It has to be online because it's like 70 megabytes. We outline in that, I took this from some other commentaries and some stuff I came up with on my own, the names of these princes and kings of the north and of the south.

Now, when God provides us with a prophetic utterance, such as the one here in Daniel chapter 11, He hits on the key players. He doesn't touch every single king. Talk about every single king that occurred between Nebuchadnezzar and the Antichrist.

He talks about the ones that had major impact on the Jews. And so we're going to see as we go through this, and I'll bring those to your attention as we go. There are many kings that are in this period of history from 535 B .C. to 160 B .C., 150 B .C. that aren't named.

They didn't need to be named. And if I named some of them, you'd go, I wonder if he pronounced that right. So this is the list. And as we go through it, I'm going to just give you some verse references, which you have access to online if you want to use that.

Verse 11, chapter 11, verse 3, and a mighty king will rise, Alexander the Great. Chapter 11, verse 5, then the king of the south will grow strong, Ptolemy I Soter. And I've got them, they're listed up there.

One of his princes in verse 5B, Seleucus I Nicator. And the daughter of the king of the south in verse 6A, Ptolemy II Philadelphus. That's the king that's being talked about. And we'll talk about the daughter when we get there.

Verse 6B, she will not retain her position. This is when Ptolemy II dies, and she ends up being sacrificed as well. Verses 7 and 8A, one of the descendants of her line, Ptolemy III Eurgates. Am I that far yet?

Yeah, I want to jump this ahead as we go. Verses 7 through 9, and into the fortress of the king of the north, that's speaking of Seleucus II Callinicus. Why don't they just name him John Smith? Verse 10, and his sons will mobilize, Antiochus III the Great.

Verse 10, and he may again wage war. I think I'm ahead of myself, there we go. He again may wage war. Seleucus III Soter from the north. And the king of the south will be enraged in verse 11, Ptolemy IV Philopator of the south.

Verse 13, for the king of the north will again raise a greater multitude. That's Antiochus III of the north. Verse 15, then the king of the north will come, Antiochus III again of the north. Verse 17, and he will set his face to come, Ptolemy V Epiphanes from the south.

Verse 20, then in his place one will arise, Seleucus IV Philopator from the north. And then, and in his place a despicable person in verse 21 will arise. That's Antiochus IV Epiphanes from 175 to 164 BC in the north.

And then in verse 25, there's a list of the kings as well. In verse 25, so the king of the south will mobilize, Ptolemy VI Philometer. The purpose of this list for you is to kind of track through as we go, if you would like, but also to help you understand that not all of them are named.

Not all the kings of that time were named. And there have been people who have had a problem with that. Well, God named the ones that need to be named. He named the ones that had an impact. He named the ones that he saw as most important for us to know about.

As we tackle this section, let's not forget, let's not forget that it was an incredibly priced prophecy that influenced the second century pagan Porphyry, who could not even begin to believe that this could be a prophecy because it was so incredibly specific, detailed, and accurate.

To brand it, he branded it a history written in the second century, which makes Daniel a liar, by the way, and this entire book false, if that's true. In the second century BC, rather than a prophecy written in the sixth century BC, as we discussed before, this prompted Jerome to write a detailed defense of the book of Daniel, and his exposition of Daniel in 407 AD became the standard for a thousand years in the church.

One commentator stated it thus, he said, the most important single work produced by the church fathers on any of the prophetic writings of the Old Testament commenting upon the original Hebrew text and showing a complete mastery of all the literature of the church on the subjects touched upon to the time of composition is without question St. Jerome's commentary on the book of Daniel.

It's a very incredibly detailed, remarkable commentary. This ancient tension has drawn lines that separate the sides of belief about the book of Daniel to this day. It is either a marvelously accurate, precise, prescient, detailed Scripture prophecy from the Lord God of the universe, or it is simply a historical document written after the fact by a second century BC writer, and it deserves no more interest to us than a reasonably well-written article out of Encyclopedia Britannica.

There is no in-between, and some people have tried to make an in-between. No, it's either true or it's not. It is true, every wit. One critic who has long since been answered, indeed, he was answered by Jerome 1 ,500 years ago, shows the general thesis of the liberal theologian who does not believe Daniel is a work of prophecy.

He says this. He admits that if this was true, what it means. He says, if this chapter were indeed the utterance of a prophet in the Babylonian exile nearly 400 years before the events, events of which many are of small comparative importance in the world's history, which are here so enigmatically and so minutely depicted, the revelation would be the most unique and perplexing in the whole of Scripture.

It would represent a sudden and total departure from every method of God's providence and of God's manifestations of His will to the mind of the prophets. It would stand absolutely and abnormally alone as an abandonment of the limitations of all else which has ever been foretold.

I think some of his hyperbole is a little bit mistaken, but he's right. It's remarkable. We can't overstate the fact that this is absolutely remarkable. This was predicted hundreds of years and even thousands of years before it happened.

The stuff predicted stuff. The important events predicted hundreds of years before have happened exactly as they were portrayed. What does that mean about the events that are going to happen thousands of years later?

They're going to happen exactly as they were portrayed. Is that not a comfort to you? It is to me. Dear ones, it is indeed an utterance of the prophet in Babylonian exile. It is the word of God, and it is true every wit.