Introduction to Daniel Chapter 7 | Adult Sunday School

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Good morning, oh

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I'm on, good morning. For those of you who don't remember me since it's been so long,

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I'm Dirk Brathorn, and I have a cab service from Sandpoint to Pend Oreille. I would appreciate it if you'd ride.

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Dirk Brathorn, yeah, no Kempthorne was a governor, I'm not one of them.

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Good morning, welcome to Kootenai Community Church Adult Sunday School. Jess called me this morning, he was just too ill to come, so we'll be in prayer for him, he's struggling.

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He dearly would have loved to continue in Judges, and he will, but it'll be a little bit later.

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So this morning we'll be looking at the book of Daniel. We'll be starting into chapter 7. So let's open in prayer.

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Oh, Kyle Rittenhouse, sure. Father, as we come before you this morning, it is with anticipation and encouragement that we will be looking into your holy word.

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We know that you speak to us through this word, that you have given us everything we need for life and godliness in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and that your word is true if everything else is a lie. We trust you, we love you, and we want to glorify you this morning by listening and honoring you by being obedient to your word.

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So we look to you to teach, not any man. We also cry out to you, Lord, this morning for Jess, our brother

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Jess, who's too ill to come this morning. I pray that you would give him relief, help him to be able to discover more the root of what is causing these things so that he can be able to treat it in a proper way and get back on his feet.

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And Lord, we look at this trial that is going on back east with a young man, Kyle Rittenhouse.

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We pray for justice and for your oversight over this. We know that you are already doing that, but we are asking you as your children to continue to do that.

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We pray for wisdom for the jurors and that there would be an outcome that would glorify you.

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And we thank you that you are in charge of the affairs of men and that nothing escapes your view.

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We are so grateful for that. Because without your sovereignty, this would all just be a clown show.

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And we thank you that it is not such. We pray for your wisdom this morning, for your insight, and for your blessing on this time together in your word.

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And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So it has been a while since we've been together.

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I was just looking here, July 25th I think was the last, no,

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August 1st was the last time I was up here. We've been utilizing more of the gifted men in this congregation.

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And that has been a delight. So the last time we were together, we finished up chapter 6 in the book of Daniel, which was the story of the lion's den.

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And one of the things we need to understand about the book of Daniel is it wasn't written in chronological continuity.

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So chapter 7 will be dealing with events that happened to Daniel earlier in his lifetime than the lion's den, in between.

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And we'll talk about that. I'll try to give context, historical as well context, as we go through.

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Questions are welcome. We'll be looking at chapter 7, which is a great, one of the great sweeps of history showing the end times.

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Some of the things that happened in the end times from Daniel's day on. And what

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I'm going to call this this morning is Daniel 7 introduction. And I'm going to proceed fairly slowly because this has been a terrifying chapter for me.

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There is nothing, there are no chapters in the Bible that aren't important. As a matter of fact, the one you're in right now that you're reading, it is the most valuable book in the

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Bible for you. Most valuable chapter in the Bible for you. The Lord has you there for a reason.

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And so as we go through Daniel this morning, I just want you to know it's the best book in the Bible. Until we study something else.

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But the introduction will take a little bit of time and I will be revisiting things again and again, more often than not to help me make sense of them.

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Because Daniel chapter 7 is a fairly complicated chapter. And I'm not much of a complicated man, so it has not been a good match.

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But I'll work on it. So looking at Daniel chapter 7, what I'd like to do first is read the whole chapter.

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And we'll kind of get a feel for the panorama that God is going to set up for us over the next 10 or 15 years that we're going to be studying this.

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Or weeks anyway. So Daniel chapter 7. In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions in his mind as he lay on his bed.

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Then he wrote the dream down and related the following summary of it. Daniel said,

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I was looking in my vision by night and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea.

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And four great beasts were coming up from the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had the wings of an eagle.

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Can you go ahead and turn on the screen up there? And I'll get my pointer thingy out.

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Yeah. There we go. The first was like a lion and had the wings of an eagle.

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I kept looking until its wings were plucked and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man.

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A human mind also was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second one resembling a bear.

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And it was raised up on one side and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth. And thus they said to it, arise, devour much meat.

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After this, I kept looking and behold, another one like a leopard which had on its back four wings of a bird. The beast also had four heads and dominion was given to it.

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After this, I kept looking in the night visions and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong.

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And it had large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet. And it was different from all the beasts that were before it.

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And it had ten horns. While I contemplated the horns, behold, another horn, a little one, came up among them.

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And three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before it. And behold, this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth uttering great boasts.

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I kept looking until thrones were set up and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His vesture was like white snow and the hair of his head like pure wool.

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His throne was ablaze with flames. Its wheels were a burning fire. A river of fire was flowing and coming out from before him.

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Thousands upon thousands were attending him and myriads upon myriads were standing before him.

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The court sat and the books were open. Then I kept looking because the sound of the boastful words which the horn was speaking.

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I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body was destroyed and given to the burning fire.

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As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away. But an extension of life was granted to them for an appointed period of time.

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I kept looking in the night visions and behold, with the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man was coming.

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And he came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him.

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His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away. And his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.

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As for me, Daniel, my spirit was distressed within me and the visions in my mind kept alarming me.

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I approached one of those who were standing by and began asking him the exact meaning of all this.

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So he told me and made known to me the interpretation of these things. These great beasts which are four in number are four kings who will arise from the earth.

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But the saints of the highest one will receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever for all ages to come.

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Then I desired to know the exact meaning of the fourth beast which was different from all the others, exceedingly dreadful, with its teeth of iron and its claws of bronze, and which devoured, crushed, and trampled down the remainder with its feet.

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And the meaning of the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn which came up, and before which three of them fell, namely that horn which had eyes and a mouth uttering great boasts, and which was larger in appearance than its associates.

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And I kept looking, and that horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them until the

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Ancient of Days came and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the highest one. And the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom.

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Thus he said, the fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth which will be different from all the other kingdoms, and it will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it.

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As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings will arise, and another will arise after them.

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And he will be different from the previous ones, and he will subdue three kings. And he will speak out against the

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Most High, and wear down the saints of the highest one. And he will intend to make alterations in times and in law, and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and a half a time.

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But the court will sit for judgment, and his dominion will be taken away, annihilated, and destroyed forever.

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Then the sovereignty, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the highest one.

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His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey him.

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At this point the revelation ended. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts were gratefully alarming me, and my face grew pale, but I kept the matter to myself.

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May the Lord bless the reading of his word, but I think my face would be pale too. If I saw stuff like that, and asked questions, and got some of those answers,

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I think Daniel would have been just like any of us. He would have understood some of it, and some of it would still have been a mystery.

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And it's the mystery that is most difficult for any of us, isn't it? On the other hand,

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I don't want to know the future other than what God has laid out in his word. That's all we need to know.

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And so as we go through Daniel chapter 7, there's going to be a temptation to make great boastful claims about how this relates to that, and how that relates to this, and if you look at this, and I see that all the time in these prophecy ministries that come out and make stupendous claims about understanding the book of Daniel, and applying it to this, to that, or to the other period of time in history.

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We're going to be very careful to stick with the word of God.

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And if any of you thinks I'm not being careful, you please speak up, because I'm teachable.

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Ask my wife. Sometimes it takes pain, but I'm teachable. So as we go through Daniel 7, and 8, and through the end of this book, we're going to be spending a lot of time jumping around, and looking at history, and comparing, and making statements about history.

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There's a lot of critical assessment of Daniel chapter 7, all of the book of Daniel. We've talked about this, and just for a little bit of review, we've talked about this a lot since I started teaching in Daniel.

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The critics have assailed Daniel, because he is so accurate in the prophecies that have come true.

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And what they basically have said is this, Nobody can be that accurate, therefore Daniel didn't write in the 6th century

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B .C. He must have written in the 2nd century, after most of these things had happened, because nobody can be that accurate.

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Well, just a question for you Bible believers here, do you think God can be that accurate?

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Do you think it's possible that the Lord Jesus Christ knows what's going to happen? That the Holy Spirit has a handle on the things that are coming?

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And we'll talk more and more about how the critics actually, when we look at their arguments, they really fail badly.

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And that will be part and parcel of our discussion as we go through chapter 7. I'm working on some explanations of how history is used, and etc.

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But I want to get it really clean, and ready for us. So basically this morning, we're going to look at an introduction to Daniel chapter 7.

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A small overview. And mostly focusing on the beginning of Daniel chapter 7, once we get into it.

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So, closing out the Aramaic, let me see if I can get this. Yeah, there we go.

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No, you've got to be smarter in the tools you're using, and I'm not qualified.

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There we go, there we go. There's all kinds of charts and visuals on the internet, and for that I'm grateful.

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On the other hand, sometimes it can be difficult picking through and figuring out which ones are faithful to God's word, and which ones like to take great liberties.

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And so hopefully I've picked the ones that are faithful. Basically we're going to be looking at overviews to this morning,

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I said. So, closing out the Aramaic section of the book of Daniel chapter 7, details a vision that fairly closely corresponds to the vision

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Nebuchadnezzar had in chapter 2. So, as we look at chapter 2, the king had this dream, and Daniel interpreted that dream.

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And he said in chapter 2, verse 31, You, O king, were looking, and behold, there was a single great statue. Remember, remember the setup?

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You had to tell him what the dream was, and then interpret it. And so Daniel was able to do that. You were looking, and behold, there was a single great statue, that statue which was large and of extraordinary splendor.

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Now, listen to these words. Splendor was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome.

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The head of that statue was made of fine gold, and its breast and arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

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You continued looking until a stone was cut out of the statue without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them.

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Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed, and all at the same time became like chaff from the summer threshing floors.

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And the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

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Those are important details. This was the dream. Now we shall tell its interpretation.

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You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory. And wherever the sons of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, or the birds of the sky, he has given them into your hand, and has caused you to rule over all of them.

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You are the head of gold. And after you will, there will arise another kingdom inferior to you, and that is the

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Medo -Persian kingdom. Commentary. And another third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth, that would be

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Greece. And a fourth, then there will be a fourth kingdom as strong as iron, Rome.

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I put that word in there, Rome. Inasmuch as iron crushes and shatters all things, so that like iron that breaks in pieces, it will crush and break all these in pieces.

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And in that you saw the feet and toes partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom, but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay.

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And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and some of it will be brittle.

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And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another and in the seat of men, but they will not adhere to one another, even as the iron does not combine with pottery.

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So that is the vision that Nebuchadnezzar had and that Daniel interpreted. Chapters 7 -12 contain dreams or visions that came to Daniel in the later years of his life.

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Some were received before the events that we read about in chapter 5 and 6. At least one came after those events.

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Remember that chapter 5 was the story of the writing on the wall and the end of the reign of Babylon.

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And chapter 6 was the story of the lion's den which occurred before chapter 5.

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Counting the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had, there are five visions, dreams in the book of Daniel.

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The first of course is Nebuchadnezzar's dream which details in general the sweep of history with the

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Gentile nations ending with the kingdom of God. The second is the vision in chapter 7 of the four beasts also ending with the dominion of Christ.

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The third vision occurs in Daniel chapter 8 and describes the Medo -Persian and the

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Grecian empire. The fourth vision occurs in chapter 9 and is most often called the 70 weeks vision which details a period of 490 years between the reign of King Artaxerxes and the baptism of Christ.

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And the fifth vision comes in Daniel chapters 10, 11, and 12 where Daniel is shown the historical progression from Daniel's time until the end times, until the final days.

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The general consensus of conservative scholars is that this vision in chapter 7 covers the trajectory of four world empires,

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Babylon, Medo -Persia, Greece, and Rome with the culmination being the second coming of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and the introduction of the fifth and final kingdom, the eternal kingdom of God.

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The idea that this chapter fleshes out the happenings in chapter 2 has not been without challenge.

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But the similarities are simply far too close to be explained away. So the most common understanding, conservative scholarship understanding, historical grammatical interpretation of this chapter is that it fleshes out the vision of chapter 2.

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It corresponds, it's parallel to that, if you will. There are only two major differences. In chapter 2 details the dream of a heathen king.

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Chapter 7 is the vision of a man of God. And that's significant. The dream in number 2, second major difference.

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The dream in chapter 2 represents the history of the nations as though they are wonderful and majestic, what has been called the outer aspect.

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And so you have words like splendor and grand and majestic, things like that.

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It's the sweep of history seen from a man's perspective. A man, a pagan man.

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Chapter 7 looks at the inward spiritual aspect of the nations, this is the second difference, and renders them as though they were wild beasts.

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Now, we one time had a calf attacked by a cougar. Now see,

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I could do something here, which is just like the leopard in chapter... No, it's not. I'm not going to do that.

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And that cougar wanted to eat that calf. It wasn't a pretty thing. We had to do a lot of doctrine to save that calf.

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That's what beasts do. That's what God is, in His word, is giving us a picture of here. Wild beasts.

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This has been likened to their inward spiritual aspect. One commentator said it this way. The first is a view of the history of nations as man sees them.

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The second is a view of the history of nations as God sees them. Man sees them as, without any reference to biblical truth, growing, getting better, more splendorous.

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God sees the depravity of man, and sees it devolving, if you will, into worse and worse, less of a caricature, less of a picture of Him, and more of a caricature of the nature of God.

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Getting worse and worse, more destructive, more horrific, more damaging, more hateful.

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And I think we can see, would any of you say that that's at least historically evident in our nation today?

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We're on a downward spiral, a Romans chapter 1 downward spiral. And this is how

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Daniel chapter 7 interprets the great sweep of history. Chapter 2 views world history from a human perspective, and paints it as a glorious and majestic panorama of power and wonder.

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Chapter 7 views history from God's perspective, and paints it as immoral, brutal, and depraved.

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And that is the truth. Chapter 7 has far more detail than chapter 2, and as one commentator notes, is something of a commentary on chapter 2.

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Critics have reserved some of their greatest contempt for chapter 7, demonstrating again their artificial criteria for judging it, for judging the book of Daniel as a 2nd century writing, a 2nd century

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BC history, rather than the 6th century BC prophecy that it is. Critics believe that it was originally written in Hebrew, and then translated into Aramaic, because they do.

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They have no history for that. Nobody said that. There's no indication of that.

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But that would fit better with their criticisms of the book of Daniel.

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Are you getting some of this? The Bible's not true because I said so, is what is going on.

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There's absolutely no historical justification for this. It is simply an assumption that many have gone with.

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It is much more likely that it was written in the language of the time, which was Aramaic. Conservative scholars then look at the vision in this chapter, and the vision in chapter 2 as directly related, so that the 4 beasts of chapter 7 correspond directly to the 4 parts of the human statue in chapter 2.

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Thus the winged lion corresponds to the Babylonian kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar. The bear corresponds to the

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Medo -Persian empire. And it's important to remember those 2 words together, Medo -Persian. Put a hyphen in there. They're linked.

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The winged leopard corresponds to the

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Grecian empire. And finally, the unnamed 4th beast corresponds to the

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Roman empire. In his commentary on Daniel, Culver puts it this way. There's one of the drawings that I saw that seems to best picture some of this.

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The lion, by the way, was commonly used as a depiction of the kingdom of Babylon. It was one of their favorite representations, just like the eagle is a representation of America.

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They also used the eagle, but the winged lion was something special for Babylonians.

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So, Culver puts it this way. He says, and why am

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I going farther? Because I don't know what I'm doing. So, you want to back me up there,

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Peter, to like maybe 94? Thank you. This is what

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Culver said. Since the same general subject is treated in this vision as in the dream of chapter 2, it is natural that the same general principles present in that prophecy should follow here.

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The same series of powers, the same continuity of rule, degeneration in character of authority, division of sovereignty, and increasing strength of the kingdoms.

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However, it is not to be expected that this will be mere repetition of the prophecy of chapter 2 under different figures.

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We might expect some elaboration and enlargement of details. And this is just what does take place in chapter 7.

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The fourth Roman kingdom, which in chapter 2 is given no more particular treatment than the first three, is here picked out for special treatment.

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Furthermore, the final Antichrist, who does not appear at all in chapter 2, is here introduced as the little horn and identified as the final king of the fourth kingdom.

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So, we're going to see a parallel to chapter 2, but we're going to see it fleshed out with more detail.

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Careful conservative scholarship also rejects the idea that the fourth kingdom is Greece and not

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Rome. That is one of the critics' assumptions, that the fourth kingdom is Greece, that Medes and Persians were successive kingdoms instead of one kingdom.

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This idea is completely unsupported by the book of Daniel and is contradicted by New Testament revelation and history.

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For example, the abomination of desolation spoken of by the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 24 is spoken of as future, which would preclude the idea that Antiochus Epiphanes fulfilled the prophecy.

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Are you all familiar with Antiochus Epiphany, one of the generals who was given power and ended up desecrating the

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Jewish temple? I believe it's written about in either 2nd or 3rd Maccabees. There's 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th

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Maccabees and it's written about there, how he required a pig to be sacrificed on the altar in Israel.

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Further, as Walvor details in his commentary, many other parallel predictions between Daniel and other

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Bible books demonstrate that much that Daniel predicted is yet to come. Prophecies in the book of Revelation written late in the 1st century also anticipate as future the fulfillment of parallel prophecies in Daniel.

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For example, Revelation 13 parallels the final stage of Daniel's 4th empire. This could not therefore refer to events fulfilled in the 2nd century

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BC. Daniel 9 .26 announces that the Messiah will be cut off and the city of Jerusalem destroyed, events that occurred in the

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Roman period. The Jewish historian Josephus believed that Daniel had predicted the rise of Rome and the

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Roman destruction of Jerusalem, looking at Daniel 9 .26. In the same manner, Daniel also wrote concerning the

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Roman government and that our country should be made desolate by them. That's what Josephus said.

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The author of the apocryphal book 2nd Esdras, who lived near the close of the 1st century AD, clearly identified the 4th kingdom of Daniel's vision as the

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Roman empire in that section of 2nd Esdras. To these arguments may be added the details of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th empires throughout the book of Daniel, which harmonize precisely with the

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Medo -Persian, Greek, and Roman empires. The alternate views of the critics can be held only if Daniel's prophecy be considered in factual error in several places, since the details of the prophecies do not really coincide with the critics' theories.

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So in order for some of their ideas to be right, the critics' ideas, Daniel has to be factually incorrect.

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And if Daniel is factually incorrect, then what does that mean about the Word of God? It's not trustworthy.

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Indeed, it is one of the dearest desires of the critics to render

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God's Word less than sovereign, less than holy, less than perfect, less than factually correct, in order to unseat the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, it is notable to remember that the stone made without hands in Daniel 2 that suddenly and completely destroys the final kingdom does it in instantaneous fashion.

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It is not accomplished over a long period of time, slowly but surely, but rather all at once.

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This will become important as we compare Daniel to Revelation and to the predictions that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself made.

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So it is going to be my contention in studying the book of Daniel chapter 7 and I believe with firm biblical support that chapter 7 parallels chapter 2, flushes out the details, goes beyond, picks on Rome, if you will, and gives greater detail to what happens with that fourth kingdom from its start to its final conclusion.

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And there will be other informational and more detail in later chapters of Daniel.

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But 7 seems to be, it's like God said, I'm going to put all of lunch in this lunchbox.

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I'm going to put sandwiches and fruit and chocolate cake and nuts and you name it, and vitamins, it's all going to be in this lunchbox.

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And so Daniel chapter 7 is just chock full of information, of exciting information about the coming days that are ahead of us and about the time between Daniel and today.

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So I thought the introduction was going to take longer than this, so we may very well just get into the first few verses of Daniel chapter 7.

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First, are there any questions that I can't answer? Yes. So that was simply the classical imagery that God chose to give to Nebuchadnezzar.

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And so in those days it was often talked about the heart of man and what that represented, and the bowels of man, and the legs, the strength, and the head, the thinking.

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So those can kind of correspond. The head was Nebuchadnezzar, and so it likens the figure of a human to the four different kingdoms that are going to be talked about.

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And the easiest way to get people to worship something is to make a statue of something that they recognize.

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And so this is one of the reasons why Nebuchadnezzar chose to make a statue of a man. It was supposed to represent himself, frankly.

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But also the imagery uses a man, head, heart, bowels, legs, strength, those kinds of things, because they correspond to the different kinds of strengths that each kingdom had.

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So the golden head was the most powerful, if you will. Nebuchadnezzar had uncontested, unquestioned rule.

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What he said was law, no matter what. And then it devolves into the Medo -Persian, which they had the laws of the

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Medes and the Persians. And remember that the king couldn't set Daniel free.

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So it represents the glory, but it also represents the change in governmental structure, the kinds of government that change and devolve as history flows.

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And so then it's going to be associated also with different beasts, different kinds of animals.

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The head is going to be associated with the lion, which was the symbol of Babylon. And we'll see that the

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Medo -Persian empires is likened to the bear. And that was a powerful creature of those days, who was second only in strength, they thought, to the lion.

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I don't know if they ever met a grizzly. Are you following? Does that make sense? So yeah, it was just imagery that people would be able to connect with.

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And it works for us too. I believe it works for us too. We can see a head, a heart, a chest, a bowels, thoughtful, and then the legs, strength.

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The Roman Empire is the most powerful of them, and also the most destructive. And isn't that interesting, that as man becomes more powerful, along with that comes more destruction?

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And that is why men try to create governments that will reign in and control the power that comes with being in government.

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One of the reasons how the founders created our complex republic was not because they liked government, but because they understood that men were depraved, and they wanted to control the controller, the government.

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I'm not going to get off into a political discussion, although it's tempting sometimes. Was that helpful?

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Okay. So, we're going to have imagery. We're going to have imagery of a statue. It's going to be compared to different animals.

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We'll do our best to make the connection between those animals and the imagery of the statue as we go, because that is what happens in chapter 2 and chapter 7.

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It is a complete fleshing out. 7 is a complete, or not necessarily complete, but a good fleshing out of chapter 2.

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So, are there any other questions before we launch into Daniel chapter 7? And I'll talk to you some more about history and about the trustworthiness of Daniel chapter 7,

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Daniel, the whole book. And we're going to make some connections about the study of history that you'll be able to see how this all works out, fleshes out.

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So, for example, and I don't want to get too far into this, but when I write, I write a lot of political stuff because I'm weird.

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And often I will quote some of the founders of our republic. Well, the founders lived 200 plus years ago, but we have their writings.

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We actually have their writings. We actually have the original constitution in that beautiful cursive.

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And so we have those documents. Keep this in your mind in the same way in Daniel's time. He had the writings of the historians who wrote about the things preceding that.

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And in the same way, he may not have referenced that person specifically, but he had read those books.

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And so his comments about history were informed comments, just as many today are informed.

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And they may not properly cite their sources all the time, although we will see that some did.

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That was kind of interesting, wasn't it? We'll get into more of that. Very, very interesting that the word of God is trustworthy, but some of the things we can look at show us how it is trustworthy.

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And Daniel was a man of government, a man of history, a man of understanding. And he knew what was going on before him because he had the records.

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He knew what to write about. So any other comments or questions before we launch into chapter 7?

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We're not going to get very far, but verse 1. In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions in his mind as he lay on his bed.

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Then he wrote the dream down and related the following summary of it. So the first year of Belshazzar is probably about 553

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B .C. This dream would have come to Daniel in a period of time between the events of chapter 4 and 5, some 14 years or so before the fall of Babylon.

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So we can kind of get a historical projection. So the fall of Babylon is 14 years in the future when this dream came to Daniel.

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So he's writing it down. And when you're reading the book of Daniel, you kind of have this idea that he's writing this when he was in his 60s.

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But he wrote the summary down when it happened. So Daniel actually had this dream between the recording of Nebuchadnezzar's vision and the event of the handwriting on the wall.

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It was between those two events sometime back in history from Daniel's perspective, from the book of Daniel's perspective.

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He actually took the time to write down a summary of this dream, which was an excellent idea since dreams often escape us if we don't chronicle them.

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How many of you have had a dream and you woke up the next morning? Now, not a dream. This is a different kind of dream. This is from God.

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But just talking about dreams in general and you woke it up and you kind of had a pretty good recollection of it.

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And it was cool. It was interesting. Hopefully you were not like some of the people that give great credence to dreams.

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I mean, it was a dream. And if you jumped in a school ground and flew 400 feet, it was a dream.

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You really can't do that. That's how some of the dreams I've had. Yeah, he's weird. You didn't write it down.

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Four hours later at lunch you were trying, no, I had a dream last night. And you remember bits and pieces of it.

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I don't know why that is. But I've had dreams that I woke up in the morning and they were vivid. And I remembered most if not all of it.

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And four hours later I just had snippets. Did I even actually dream last night? Daniel was smart.

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He wrote it down. He wrote down a summary of it. So he would be able to hang, this was the skeleton that he would be able to hang the meat on later on.

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It should be noted also that this was a dream that occurred while Daniel slept on his bed as opposed to a series of visions that came to him that had come to him when he was awake.

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The dream came to him a few years after the dream Nebuchadnezzar had. Daniel was in his late 60s when he wrote in this book about the dream.

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But the details had been written down earlier. So he had the summary to remind himself.

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He was a careful historian. He knew these things. The subsequent verses that detail the dream are actually only a summary of all that he dreamt.

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In Daniel chapter 7, we're reading a summary of the dream. Note also that Daniel names a specific time which permanently roots this vision, this dream, as actually happening in the 6th century

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B .C. He said, in the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon. That's a date that we can find out about.

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He did that on purpose. God did that on purpose. So that we actually can say, oh, he wrote this 5 -600

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B .C. Contrary to the critics who would say

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Daniel was written in the 2nd century, Daniel leaves no room for that. God gives us a fixed date in history on which we can hang our hats.

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553 B .C., most likely. Somewhere in that era. Any questions about verse 1? Verse 2,

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Daniel said, I was looking in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea.

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In this vision, some of the things Daniel saw are symbols. The four winds of heaven often symbolize the chaotic conditions that characterize the nations of the world and the power that God exerts on the nations.

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The sea is often used symbolically representing the world of nations. Isaiah 17, 12, and 13.

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Alas, the uproar of many peoples who roar like the roaring of the seas and the rumbling of nations who rush on like the rumbling of mighty waters.

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The nations rumble on like the rumbling of many waters, but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away.

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And he chased the chaff like the mountains before the wind or like whirling dust before a gale. So God is not averse to using symbolism.

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Let's be careful to only find it where he designates that it's at. Revelation 17, 1, Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying,

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Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters. Then in that same chapter, verse 15,

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And he said to me, The waters which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.

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So it is correct to note that often God will use the winds and the sea to symbolize the nations and the chaotic conditions that attend the nations.

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Do we still have chaotic conditions today? Or everything is organized and everybody is lined up, got a haircut?

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No, it's still chaotic. Here begins the detailed chronology of the end times with which Daniel was concerned, with which

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Daniel is most concerned. Chapters 1 through 6 are considered by both conservative and liberal scholars as being the first half of the book, and is general in tone with a few specific stories.

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Chapters 7 through 12 are more specific with its series of visions and historical references to world rulers and kingdoms.

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Culver, in his commentary, actually separates Daniel into three sections. The first section being an introduction in Daniel chapter 1, that would be section 1.

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Section 2 is chapters 2 through 7 being the times of the Gentiles and which is written in Aramaic.

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And the third section which details Israel's relationship to the Gentiles written in Hebrew, chapters 8 through 12.

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And there's much to commend that outline as well. I'm not going to dictate which outline is most correct, but both of these have good characteristics to appeal to them, that appeal to us.

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In any event, no matter how you divide it, we are heading into a part of the book that is the most controversial and is also very encouraging and exciting.

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It was written for our encouragement. The word of God was written for our encouragement. And so when we don't understand something, we need to go back to it.

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We need to seek teaching. We need to seek help. And I need a lot of help. Any questions on Daniel chapter 7 verse 2?

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You know what? I think we're going to quit there because 3 is where it gets really serious about the beasts and the details and we're going to be looking at the beginning of the sweep of history from Daniel's time and how it relates to the prophecies of the end times.

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And I drove past a church which I will not name a week or so ago and it's one that I think all the time is doing prophecy seminars.

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And, you know, it's like it's become a cash cow, if you will.

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Prophecy seminars have become a cash cow. God's prophecy, and I have no problem with someone who's teaching properly, maybe coming to a place and being supported as they teach the word of God, but most of these that I've seen are just nuts.

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I can't think of other ways to word it. They just mischaracterize the word of God and they draw unwarranted conclusions and make it say things that it has never said.

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We're not going to do that. We're going to be very careful. Some of it may seem boring because I contend that the history of Daniel, the concepts in the book of Daniel, have been fleshed out over the last three and a half millennia.

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And Lord Jesus Christ is going to comment on them. The prophets, the New Testament writers are going to comment on them and we'll look at some of the better commentators who have worked through these things.

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It's still going to be a panorama that is spectacular, disconcerting and exciting at the same time.

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There's a lot going to happen on this whole planet. And some of it's going to be really nasty.

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But it's going to culminate in the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ over the universe as was intended in Genesis chapter 1.

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And so I'm looking forward to it. Any other comments or questions before we close? Jess may be back next week.

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This is taking for me a lot of reading and a lot of study. More so than normal because I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

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So we've got three other sharp knives in here and they told me I was doing this. So you're at my mercy.

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So if there's no other questions, we'll close in prayer. Father, we thank you for the

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Word of God, especially for this section of Daniel because that's what we're in today. It is your word to us.

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It is your word about the future. You know the future. We trust you. We ask,

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Father, that we would not step ahead of that nor lag behind it. But that we would be right smack in the middle of understanding what you have for the future of this planet, for the future of your people, for the saints, and for the glory of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. For that is what we seek most. We seek most to honor him, to obey him, and to teach him to the nations so that they will know that it is he who rules in eternity.