Daniel 10

Hello and good evening. This is Truth in Love Network. Thank you for watching. Thank you for your support. We really appreciate it.

We seek further support from you if you will. We want to reach our neighborhood, our community with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We want to reach our neighborhood with God's Word. We want to just spend time together soaking it in, hearing from God, looking at His Word, and doing that for and with our community for the glory of God.

So would you pray for us? Would you share the videos? Would you give us a like, a heart, a comment?

All those wonderful things that social media has us to do to get the Word out.

We want to celebrate Christ and glorify God in our community. So thank you for watching and thank you for your support.

Leave us a comment. Let us know if we can pray for you. All you have to do is type me.

If you have a question, if you have a question about the Bible, it doesn't have to be about the subject we're talking about tonight, a question about church.

Dan and I would love to stop what we're doing and interact with you and try to answer your questions.

I think it would be a fun conversation if we could have some interaction going on. So feel free to interject and ask questions.

Let us know what's on your mind. If you have any questions about anything specifically that we're talking about tonight, love to try to answer those questions as well.

And with that being said, let's go ahead and get started. Dan, welcome back. Thank you for joining me again.

We are continuing in the book of Daniel, looking at the prophecies of Daniel. And I'm not sure where we should go next.

Revelation would be a fun task to tackle, but it would be difficult maybe.

But Daniel speaks so much, or you find so much of Daniel in Revelation, I'm not sure where we should go next.

But you can find a lot of Daniel in Revelation. And we may speak to that tonight.

We finished up, we wrapped up Daniel chapter nine, looking at the 70 weeks, the 77s.

And Dan and I looked at it from two slightly different perspectives, more of a, what would you call your perspective?

Understanding the 70 weeks, if you could give it a... I was going to say correct. Obviously, obviously.

I don't know. I don't know if it has a name. I guess...

Maybe a typological fulfillment as opposed to chronological fulfillment.

Okay. But that's just off the top of my head. Don't quote me or hold me to it. Well, you're looking at different time periods, and they're not necessarily specific.

But these things happen in this time period. And of course,

I'm looking at it from a more specific, reading these numbers more specifically and trying to have it point to the birth of the

Messiah, point to the judgment that come upon Israel. But that's where we get these 70 weeks of years, the 490 years, the 62 weeks.

Then you hear people talk about 69 weeks and then the 70th week. So you find all that in Daniel chapter nine.

We now come up on Daniel chapter 10. And as Dan was telling me before the video started, he sees

Daniel chapter 10 as more devotional. Daniel's going to speak of a prophecy, an angel coming to him.

And it seems another physical appearance because he's being touched again, being told to stand up.

So this seems to be another one of those physical interactions, not just a vision or out -of -body experience or a dream, but maybe a physical interaction with this messenger.

And what else can we say? I think that's about it.

We're going to wrap up Daniel in two more chapters. We're at 10. We're going to go to 11 and 12.

And Dan and I were talking before the video started. There's something significant about Daniel chapter 11.

And it's. What was my question? I posed these three questions to Dan before the video.

And because I saw some relationship, we sometimes talk about the differences in the different end times views, especially that we point out the most popular one, the pre -Trib, pre -millennial rapture view, and then ours, the post -millennial view.

There's some things we have in common. And I explained it like this. If you've ever heard of Ken Ham answers in Genesis, he'll explain his situation like this.

You've got evidence, you've got archaeological evidence, but you have a Christian maybe, a

Christian archaeologist and a secular archaeologist coming at it from two different perspectives, looking at it through two different lenses.

But they're looking at the same evidence and they come away with two different interpretations because they're coming from two different perspectives, two different lenses.

Similar situation with eschatology here. We've got the same evidence, but we're coming away with different viewpoints.

And we kind of agree on some of these things, like with the book of Revelation.

We both agree that there are references to Daniel in Revelation. These 70 weeks, especially the 69 weeks here in Daniel 9, both seem to agree that they are pointing to the birth of the

Messiah. And then both points of view reference this idea of Jacob's trouble.

You'll hear people talk a lot about Jacob's trouble. But the difference is we view them and interpret them and see them in different ways, where the pre -millennial, pre -trib rapture folks, they see all these things as yet to have happened.

They're going to happen in the future. And we see them as already happened, happening in the past.

And when I talked to Dan about this before the video, he encouraged me that when we get to Daniel chapter 11, we're really going to be able to give some clarity to the position that we hold, the partial preterist position, and we'll be able to walk through Daniel 11 and help you look through the lens that we're looking through and see where we get and understand these things happening and being fulfilled in the past.

So I kind of give that as a teaser as we approach Daniel chapter 11, that you may receive some more clarity into our position.

We will not mention the nation of Russia once. I mean, they're not...

I about lost my cough. With that being said, let's go into Daniel chapter 10.

All right. I'm going to read verses one through nine. And Dan, when I finish, I'll just let you give us some commentary, give us some explanation.

Daniel chapter 10. In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a message was revealed to Daniel, who was named

Belshazzar. And the message was true and one of great conflict.

But he understood the message and had an understanding of the vision. In those days, I, Daniel, had been mourning for three entire weeks.

I did not eat any tasty food, nor did meat or wine enter my mouth, nor did

I use any ointment at all until the entire three weeks were completed. And on the 24th day of the first month, while I was by the bank of the great river that is the

Tigris, I looked in my eyes and looked, and behold, there was a certain man dressed in linen, whose waist was girded with a belt of pure gold of Euphaz.

His body was also like a barrel. His face had the appearance of lightning.

His eyes were like flaming torches, his arms and feet like the gleam of polished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of tumult.

Now I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, while the men who were with me did not see the vision.

Nevertheless, a great dread fell on them, and they ran away to hide themselves.

So I was left alone and saw this great vision. Yet no strength was left in me, for my natural color turned to a deathly paler, and I retained no strength, but I heard the sound of his words.

And as soon as I heard the sound of his words, I fell into a deep sleep on my face, and my face to the ground.

Crazy. There's some stuff in the Bible where if you have a vivid imagination and you look at it, it's incredible the things that God is capable of and the things that God does.

It says in the first verse that Daniel saw a vision. It doesn't really tell us what it was.

It said that he understood it, he knew what it was. It may have been one of the ones that he recorded for us. It may not have been.

We don't really know. But what we do know is that when he saw this vision, he understood exactly what it meant.

It may have been Daniel 9, since he said, you've been wanting to know the answer to this, this vision, and here

I am to tell you. Here's the answer to it. He understood it. It may have been something else.

But either way, what you see is that it threw him into a depression.

We would think of this as some sort of anxiety attack or depression.

He wouldn't eat basically a cheeseburger.

He didn't want to eat delicacies. He didn't eat meat. He didn't have a drink of wine. He didn't have the good things.

He didn't put his deodorant on. He didn't put his ointment on for three weeks.

It was rough. And then he went down to the river. We don't know why. He may have realized, I'm starting to stink.

Maybe I should go wash up. We don't really know. But what we do know is that at the end of this depression, he was down there.

Before you move forward, this distress that he's talking about, it's not abnormal. It's not out of the ordinary.

He speaks of it before, right? Yeah, well, it's not abnormal for him or for believers in general.

Some people will try to say that if you're depressed or anxious, it means you don't have enough faith.

But that's just not the case. There's some times when your body will just fail you.

It won't be able to handle what you've got going on. We see this in the Psalms, Psalm 13.

I just heard a wonderful sermon on it talking about how depression, and if you read the

Psalm, he goes through a terrible time of depression. You don't really know what it is. He doesn't want to get up.

He's asking God all sorts of questions. Then he just talks to God and he ends by quietly praising him and waiting for something to change.

But he's in a depression. He feels like God's not there, but he knows better.

So he quietly waits on God even when he's depressed, when he's anxious. He has that panic attack.

I think Daniel here is facing something of the same thing. We see it in other saints.

John Calvin, when his wife died, they had to drag him out of his bedroom. He was struggling.

Spurgeon had something similar happen where he was just depressed. He'd go through bouts of depression. He'd come out of it.

He'd go back into it, come out of it. So yeah, it's not uncommon at all.

Daniel seems to be about, like you were talking about, not understanding and wanting to know concerning these visions.

Like you said, it's so familiar to us when we want to understand, we want to know what's going on.

It's not made clear to us or made evident immediately. Right, right.

Here it says that he did understand it. So be careful what you wish for,

I guess. I want to know what God's doing in my life. God's like, we really don't. Just trust me and we'll find out along the way.

If you do, it'll scare you. Yeah, so he was going through this.

Then there's some debate on who shows up. When you look at the description, legs like burnished bronze, ufas around the waist, barrel, appearance of lightning.

His eyes are flaming torches, sound like a multitude or like rushing waters.

Man, that sounds like a description of Jesus from Revelation. Yeah. Some people think it was another angel, maybe

Gabriel. Don't know. It doesn't say what we do know is that when he showed up, everyone got scared.

Usually also happens when people enter into the presence of God. They're terrified. Yeah. The specific reference is

Revelation 1, 13 through 15, I think. I think you can parallel this verse and 13, 14, 15 in chapter one.

Yeah. To a good degree. It may actually be helpful to go there.

Let's see. Hey, Roger. Hope you're doing well tonight, brother. Revelation chapter one.

You said we're going to get into it. Here we go. Here we go. In the midst of the lampstands is one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe with a golden sash around his chest.

The hairs on his head were white, white like wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. That's a connection there.

His feet were like burnished bronze. That was the description. His voice was like a roar of many waters.

It's the same thing. In his right hand, he held seven stars and he had a two edged sword coming out of his mouth.

His face was shining like the sun in full strength. That also comes directly from the book of Daniel.

Then he tells us. Exactly what happens.

Verse 17. I fell at his feet as a dead man and he laid his right hand upon me.

That sounds pretty. That sounds pretty familiar, too. Yep. Same kind of reaction.

And then he says, fear not. I am the first and the last, the living one. I died and behold,

I'm alive for forevermore. The keys of death and Hades that can only be described of as Jesus, who was living and then died and then rose again.

So there's a strong case that Jesus, a pre -incarnate

Jesus, showed himself in a vision to Daniel. Which is incredible.

Hey, I'm super depressed. And where's Jesus? He's right there.

That's true for anybody, whether he has a vision for you or not. You get super depressed.

You're looking at the world around you. You see Biden botching just about everything it comes in contact with.

I mean, it happens no matter who's in office. But you see all these things happening.

You see the Equality Act about to be pushed through where it's going to make Christianity illegal for all intents and purposes illegal.

You're seeing all sorts of agendas being forced down our throats. And where is

God in all of this? He's right there. God has already acted.

He's already paid for sin. He's already defeated death. He went down in the grave and then death thought he was going to get a laugh out of it.

And Jesus rose up. Death had to shut his mouth for forever. Sin was done.

It was finished. Yeah, it's good stuff.

Absolutely. Let's see.

You heard the words in Daniel 10 verse 9. Heard the sound of his words.

And as I heard the sound of his words, I fell on my face in a deep sleep with my face to the ground. Yes. I don't know as if I would have fallen asleep, but let's face it.

If that person comes to you and speaks and it sounds like you're standing at the bottom of Niagara Falls.

That is a sound of his voice saying you fell into a deep sleep.

Oh, he knocked me unconscious. I was going to say passed out. Knocked out.

Yeah, absolutely. Put Daniel in the concussion protocol. He's done for. He can't come back for a while.

Bench him. Yeah, he needs a nap. After being observed for a period of time.

Gotcha, gotcha. You ready to move on to the next section? Let's do it. All right. 10 through 10 through 14.

Then behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees and said to me,

Oh, Daniel, man of high esteem. Understand the words that I'm about to tell you and stand upright for I have now been sent to you.

And when he had spoken this 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.

The 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 vision pertains to the days yet future.

Yeah, this one's tough. This this one. Let's start with the good news.

He went from being asleep. Now he gets to be hands and knees getting ready to crawl, which is it's kind of a metaphor.

I don't know. You think you're you're up, you get knocked down, but God builds you back up to where you need to be.

Not the main point. Not going to dwell there. I just thought it was. It said that Daniel sought two things.

He sought wisdom from God. Exactly. No. What is it that God's teaching? What does he want me to know?

What is there that I should know? And he said his heart or he humbled himself before God.

He tried to live a righteous life. He humbled himself. He trusted in the

Lord. And he said, God, I need to know what's going on. As a prophet, he had.

He had extra ability. I should believe that's a bad way of putting it. He had a.

He had a lot of communication with God on a different level than than we do.

God actually came and knocked him down, showed himself to him.

Whereas we have the scriptures, but the same principle holds true.

Daniel sought to be holy and trusted the Lord and searched God for the things that he needed to know about his life and the future.

And it's the same thing for us. If we want to know what God is doing, we humble ourselves, live a holy life and seek to find

God where he is revealing himself to us, which to us is in the scriptures. Daniel finds

God there and he says, verse 13, the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days.

But Michael, one of the chief priests, came to help me. One of the things that make people say this may not be

Jesus is they say that Jesus wouldn't have had any trouble battling against the prince of Persia.

Now, we understand who is the prince of Persia here. I believe that he's speaking of an evil entity, a demon of some sort that was or maybe even a group of demons that was behind the political goings on, the political maneuverings within the

Persian Empire. That sort of thing seems very common that in those days there were evil entities, evil spirits influencing the rulers of the world to do evil things.

Right. Well, and before you move forward, and I'm sure you got a little more to say on that.

I know sometimes that hits the ear kind of strange for somebody like us to talk about.

There was a there was a prince, an evil fallen angel, a demon or somebody to that effect that was given an assignment, if you will, to Persia.

And that may fall strange on someone's ear. And it does, because, you know, we can we deal mainly with what we can see and what we can touch and hear.

We don't anything happening outside of us. We're kind of skeptical of it, you know, falls on our ears weird.

But let's be reminded of Ephesians six, verse 12. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of weaknesses in the heavenly places.

So there's things going on that we can't see. Here, Daniel is helping us to understand that.

I mean, it's we can surmise pretty much that there were there were evil beings, demons, if you will, given assignments for certain nations.

And there were battles for those nations in the heavenlies.

Yep, yep, absolutely. When it says in Ephesians, we don't wrestle or we don't struggle or strive against flesh and blood, but against all these other things.

It's important to remember that when we come up against different people in our context, county commissioners pushing abortion or people trying to defile marriage.

We're not actually fighting against the person in front of us. There is a spiritual reality behind the scenes that we are actually wrestling against.

And one of the reasons why I believe that scriptures talk about that is because they want us to remember that we're not battling against this person.

We want to see that person saved. Right. We want to see that person redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

So we're not battling them as as an enemy, even though they may be acting as an enemy at that time.

We're not battling against them. We command them to repent, to believe. We hold them accountable for their actions and tell them, no, you as a leader, as a ruler, need to do this and this and this, because this is what

God has said. That is your responsibility to act. Oh, man, my mind went blank.

Um, that's that's a good conversation to have because and you know, we're talking about it before we went on.

A lot of people think that my my job, my responsibility is finished. When I check the boxes,

I cast my ballot and I get in my vehicle and I leave the polling booth and I've done my civic duty and I've done my

Christian civic duty. And I'm finished. But there's more to our program than just that.

Yep, yep. Yes. It's what you're speaking about. Yeah, yeah.

Voting Republican is not fulfilling the Great Commission. Right. Just because we vote for the right person doesn't mean that we're doing right, because sometimes voting for the right person doesn't get the right person in office.

Sometimes there are evil, wicked people who are in office. And what is our responsibility when they get into office, especially locally?

Because you can actually go and sit outside their office till they walk by. Hey, I need to talk to you. You're endangering your soul.

I'd like to help you with that. You need to quit acting like a wretch and turn to Christ and find forgiveness of your sins.

Christians throughout the centuries have done this all the time. Mordecai did it with Esther.

Haman wanted to be bowed down and worshipped. He's like, I'm not doing that. There's a bunch of other reasons why it wasn't just a spiritual thing.

But he was like, no, I'm not going to do that because you're not acting like one who deserves to be bowed down to and paid homage to.

You're acting outside of your God -given authority. We'll speak to this question if you're able to, if you don't mind.

The question is, who am I to speak to them that way? They are in office.

They have their duty and responsibility. I'm leading my family. Who am I to speak into their life and speak to them in that position in that way?

What would you say to that question? There's a very, very simple answer that's going to sound smart when

I say it at first. But let me say it gently and then explain it. You're a Christian.

I don't mean that to be a smart way. I mean it because it's one of the basics of our faith. People have tried to twist the commandment directly from Jesus that that's exactly what we're supposed to be doing.

I'm flipping there. I can quote it off the top of my head, but I'm going to read it. Okay. Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Past tense, which means right now, Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth.

Go, therefore. Why? Because I have all authority in heaven on earth. You, Christian, go and make disciples of all nations or disciple the nations.

If you're discipling someone, you're teaching them how they ought to act. In other words, there's an understanding that they're not going to, on their own, know how to act correctly or properly.

They're not going to know any different because, let's face it, we didn't when we didn't know Christ. We were doing all sorts of wretched stuff that we wish we hadn't.

And then Christ found us and he changed our lives. And now it's our responsibility to look to those around us, the nations being individuals and mothers and fathers and schoolteachers and politicians.

That in each place we find ourselves, we baptize or no, we are in ahead of myself.

Disciple those people. We teach them. Well, it says baptizing them in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And part of discipling them is teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.

And is that going to get dangerous? Yeah, because people don't want to hear that they're doing a poor job.

So that's why Jesus ends up saying, and I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. Yeah.

So, well, that's it. I mean, that's an encouragement for us, for us to know that there's more more to Matthew 28 than just an evangelism method.

Yeah, it's more than just evangelism, more than just sharing the gospel on a one on one basis. There's more.

Encapsulated into that, that is for us. So, so when you asked before, who am

I to go and tell that person how to live? Well, as I answered, honestly, you're nobody.

But the, the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth has commanded that you go in his place and speak those truths to those people.

Right. So who are you? You're nobody. Who is Christ? Christ is everybody.

Not everybody in all people, but he is the most important one.

Yeah. I say that because there's a new age concept of the universal Christ. And we are not talking about that. Right, right.

Way off base. Well, and I think it would be helpful, too, to talk about how, talk about the approach.

We're so, we're so concerned about offending people. And we don't want our approach to be offensive in our approach per se.

Because the message, the words of Christ are offensive in and of themselves when we speak, when we speak about sin, when we speak about God.

So there's an assumption in the gospel that I'm a sinner. I've done something wrong.

I'm in the wrong and I need, I need a savior. Right. I need to be punished and I need a savior.

That's kind of backwards, though. And here's why I say that. Because you're absolutely right. But it starts backwards.

Telling, telling people the goodness of God and his law and the way that we ought to live in his world because he has said so in scriptures is not what's offensive.

The offense has already been made. When his creatures use his air and his food, his water and his authority in order to blaspheme him.

Yeah. So we have no reason to feel ashamed. We have no reason to be timid.

We have every reason to be respectful because God has placed people in authority. We have a reason to be compassionate, but we have no reason to be timid or fearful because the offense is not made by us initially.

We're calling them out for the offense they have against a holy God. Right. So. And that's just encouragement to go boldly.

Absolutely. Not, not to go, you know, with a, with a sledgehammer, but just, just the encouragement to, to go period.

Right. And that, that may be intimidating to some people because some people are like, they're not built like that.

Absolutely. Let me point out something from, from the, the, the story of Esther. I just preached on, on Esther three tonight.

So it's fresh. Esther, when she, she realized that her people were going to be doomed, her people were, were, were supposed to be killed by, by Haman.

She rebuked the king, but she did it so gently.

So she did it. Don't only the way a woman could do it, where she, she rebuked him so nicely that he thought he came up with a good idea.

She, she fed him for two days. And at the end of two days of just giving him this amazing food and, and everything, he said, well, what do you want up to half my kingdom?

She's like, okay. Somebody is trying to kill me. It's not good. And the king flew off the hill.

Who's trying to kill you? That guy is the guy that's sitting down here with you. And she rebuked him by showing him what, what he had signed off on.

Cause him and Haman agreed with it, sat down and, and got drunk thinking that they had legislated themselves, you know, up a couple notches when really they were doing something wicked.

He's like, you, you fooled me. And Haman met his end. So you don't have to necessarily go out and, and be the one who preaches a fire breathing sermon to a city council.

You can just be faithful and, and persistent, even if you're quiet and gentle.

So know that there's, there's a lot of folks out there who just, they don't, they don't have that in them, especially some ladies.

They're not built like that. And even if they were to speak up, they would take any sort of backlash so personally, so harshly, it would crush them.

And that, that's not what God's asking you to do. He's not asking you to, to have your, your, your soul crushed.

He's just asking you to be faithful and to be bold, whatever boldness looks like for you, not backing down.

Esther was very bold. If her request was denied, she would die.

Right. It took a lot of gumption to go before the king and to tell him that he was wrong. But she did it in the sweetest way possible.

And that's completely fine. It worked out great. And it's, we're looking at Matthew chapter 28 and those verses, it's good to reflect on the very last part, which speaks to what we're talking about.

Below, I am with you always. So we can go, we can go in, in the, in the personality that God has given us in remembrance that he is promises that he is with us.

Yep. Absolutely. Let's see.

Any, any thoughts, any further thoughts in verses 10 through 10 through 14? Nah. Okay.

Not right now. All right. Maybe later. We might come back to it, but no. All right. Let me read the next three, 15, 16, 17.

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.

Oh 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.

Any. Yo. It was humble.

Yeah. Yeah. He said, God, I've got nothing. At all.

He said, you've told me your truth and I'm gonna need a minute. What can

I say to you? You have all this power and strength and you've told me you have knowledge and wisdom and I just have nothing.

And he says, there's no strength. There's no breath. How can I? What would I even say to you right now? Yeah. I mean, honestly, we could probably all learn a little something from that.

I know me. I talk a lot. I probably learned to talk a little less sometimes.

Just sit there and sit there in all of God and remember that he is good, powerful and strong.

Loving. And you're speaking to Daniel's character a lot tonight and in our flesh, we would like to hear the words that were spoken to Daniel in verse 11.

And he said to me, oh, Daniel, man of high esteem. You know, our flesh wants to hear that we want to be spoken well of me and we want to be built up by other men.

But here he's given that he's given that word from heaven, basically.

Oh, man of high esteem. And you're speaking a lot tonight of his character.

So if we want to if we want to be favored, we want to have favor from God. Be in high esteem in God's eyes.

Kind of like what you were saying, I can learn a lot from from Daniel and his character. His humility is his behavior in the presence of God.

Because all Daniel really did was pray, trust

God and be faithful. Yeah. And boil it down. All of us can do that.

Yeah. But believers anyway. Right. Because we all have the same spirit to empower us.

It may look a little different. No, you're not going to be having prophecy visions like Daniel where you have the strength sucked out of you.

But you're going to have other situations where you just be faithful, pray and do what

God would have you to do. Absolutely. God doesn't make because here's the thing.

Daniel didn't do anything except for what the Holy Spirit was guiding him to do.

And what was Daniel learning about? Daniel was learning about the victory growth and take over the kingdom of God over the whole earth.

Fantastic. So what am I going to do to take over the whole earth? I'm going to pray.

I'm going to be faithful, trusting God to do the rest. That's right. That's all you got to do. Yeah.

Absolutely. All right. Let's tackle these last few verses. We'll be we'll wrap up chapter 10, starting in verse 18.

Then this one with human appearance, touch me again and strengthen me. And he and he said, old 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 no one who stands firmly with me against these forces, except Michael, your prince.

Yeah, he he finally gets a little bit of courage because he was strengthened by God.

He's like, oh, give me some strength. Please tell me something. And so he does.

He says, I'm going back to fight now, going back to fight against the prince of Persia. When I get over there, you're going to have

Greece to deal with after. Basically saying I'm going to I'm going to win. And then after I win,

Greece is going to come. He says, I'm going to tell you everything. And I'm not going to have any help except for Michael.

God didn't need a lot of help. He really I don't think he needed

Michael's help. Right. But. He he was battling.

There was angels and and depending on how you think the hierarchy of the.

Angels in the angel armies and in heaven work, maybe it was Michael and his, you know.

What they call those platoons or whatever below him. Don't know.

He said it was only Michael. So I assume it just be Michael. But it was God. God's angel working to defeat the forces of evil, to uphold his covenant, to keep his promises.

Because what would have happened if. If Persia had been allowed to go on continually sinful with no restraint, with no battling from God, eventually they would have gotten tired of the

Jews. Because they they had a demonic force behind behind them that was feeding them these thoughts, these ideas, these things.

I mean, they would have tried to wipe out the Jews. And then what would have happened if the Jews are wiped out? There's no there's there's no

Messiah. There's no Messiah. Yeah. Yeah. Not only is there no

Messiah, it proves God a liar. It proves God to be unfaithful. It proves him to be wicked and sinful.

And if we have no spotless lamb to die for us and we have no salvation, we're still in our sins.

And all you can ever hope for is for Persia to run amok on the earth. And that goes on forever.

So he tells him Persia's Persia's going down. Greece is going to try it next and they're going down.

He had already told him in like three other visions before this. And then after Greece goes down,

Rome goes down. And after Rome goes down or Rome goes down, the kingdom of God is established and it's going to grow and it's going to fill the whole earth.

He said, you have no strength because you're trying. Basically, he was trying to understand these things on his own power.

When he finally rested and received power from the Lord, he had more strength than he knew what to do with.

He said, all right, tell me more. You don't need more. Just know that I'm going to be faithful for you. We'll be faithful and do exactly what what

I've promised all along. So when he's when he speaks of Persia and then he speaks of Greece to come next, he's being consistent with the prophet, the previous prophecies, the timeline.

Yeah. OK. And so to me, what I'm seeing here is he's in his revelation.

He's been consistent with the previous prophecies, the timeline of the kingdoms that were there.

We're going to come. He prophesied that they were going to be there. We're going to fall. And just like you said in the last kingdom, that that's going to usher in the

Messiah. But what what I see going on here is. Daniel's been given it, not insight, but unveiling.

Of what we don't normally get to see this, this behind the curtain look at what's going on in the heavenly places.

Yeah. And how how God is working behind the scenes in the heavenly places, how he's fulfilling this prophecy that he's given

Daniel, how he's going to cause these are not every detail, but at least that there are.

You know, they have a they have a prince, they have an angel, they have someone fighting for them and that they are actually fighting against someone else in the heavenly places, which is.

You know what a demon and even one who is trying to deceive

Persia and and do what you're talking about, take out the Jews. Mm hmm. I mean, that was that was kind of the direction that they were going.

You know, you pointed out Esther and, you know, same empire. Do what?

It's the same empire. Yeah. Yeah. Esther was set in the Persian Empire. It was a hazardous.

It was just a few of maybe 80 years later, 90 years later, something like that.

Yeah. So so there's this, you know, we know the story. There's there's been movies made that we can pop in the city player and watch about Esther and we can read the accounts and we see the men involved.

Mordecai, Esther, the king of Persia and the prince of Persia, I think is the name of the movie.

We see these characters, these human characters involved. But Daniel is actually getting to see the the beings in the heavenly places and what's taking place and that there's battles taking place and that they are they are being protected.

And that. That God is going to be true to his promises and these kingdoms are going to fall because he's he's he's going to.

Preserve his people, you know, for his glory and for the salvation of his people.

Yeah. And that's very, very interesting. It's good for him to know because they would have had that prophecy given to them at the time of Esther.

And, you know, who's never mentioned in the book of Esther. Is God the name of God, the word,

God, Jesus Christ, Messiah, any of that never mentioned at all in the book of Esther, but God had already acted.

He had already promised he was right there fighting the prince of Persia, fighting him with Michael the whole time, saying,

I'm putting him down. Don't don't you worry about it. I got this. Right, right. Yeah. Oh, how fascinating.

I wonder how faithful God is. Absolutely. How faithful. All right.

If you do not know God as the faithful one, we would encourage you to come to him.

Understand that we are all fallen. We were all sinners, all missed the mark.

None of us can can be good enough and we cannot make up for our badness.

We're all in the same circumstance and we need someone outside of us.

I heard a really, really good sermon from our pastor this morning.

He preached from first Peter one, three through nine. And as he read verse four, listen, verse four says to obtain an inheritance, which is imperishable and undefiled, will not fade away reserved in heaven for you.

So the implication is that anything that we would try to obtain, anything that we would try to earn is going to be perishable, defiled and will fade away.

So we need to inherit something, something that is not ours, that is outside of us, that is given to us.

And that is the salvation from Jesus Christ that he earned, that he deserves glory for.

That's the only way that we can be made right with God is to inherit something outside of us, be given to us.

Because anything that we try to do is perishable, defiled and fade away. We need

Jesus. And so we would urge you to come to him tonight.

Repent of your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and trust in him to save you in his finished work on the cross, his death, burial and resurrection.

And he sits at the right hand of the father as king of kings, lord of lords. And he has all authority in heaven on earth.

He is our king. And we proclaim his kingship and urge you to submit to him today.

Dan, would you mind to close us in prayer? Sure. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.

Thank you for a wonderful Lord's Day. It was certainly a blessing. We thank you for your work that we don't ever see.

Thank you for giving Daniel a glimpse that we may peek in and know that you're always at work, that you're behind all things, that you are always fighting for us.

That we're not wrestling against flesh and blood, but we are battling against things that we don't know about and that you have won that victory for us.

We pray that you would make your gospel appear more real to us so we would understand and believe your gospel more and that we would live in faith in light of the knowledge that you have died in our place.

We love you in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Alright, thank you guys for watching. Remember that Jesus is king.

Go speak with the authority of Christ as we spoke about earlier. Go live in the victory of Christ and continue to go out there and preach the gospel of Christ.