Daniel Overview

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Yeah, always good. Yeah. If you go back there, it's a bomb.
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Andy, will you open us up with a word of prayer? Our Father, God, we thank you for who you are and who we are because of Christ.
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We pray Lord that as we open your word, you would bless us that you would be filled with right words and right thoughts that we would hear and that we would truly love you with all our hearts.
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Bless us this day, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Well, we didn't have much time at the end to take any questions last week, so before I get started on the summary of the book, if you have any questions from last week, if you have anything as we start walking through the summary of the book, then just raise your hand or holler or something.
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I know Mauricio had some questions, but he usually pops in here a few minutes late.
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Anybody? Anyone? This is a test.
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What was Daniel chapter 1 about? This is not an open book.
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This is not an open book test. I see you're flipping. It's about Daniel. What's wrong with you?
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Right, exactly. Alright, in Daniel chapter 1, we saw the...
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Daniel chapter 1, we saw God take Jehoiakim. Who was
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Jehoiakim? He was king of Judah, and he was a tyrant. It says that God gave
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Jehoiakim into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. I think it's somewhere up there, like the first second.
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So we saw Daniel chapter 1 that God gave... we'll just basically say
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Judah into their oppressor.
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And who was that oppressor? Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar.
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What was the purpose for him being given into their hands? They dishonored the
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Sabbath. Specifically dishonored the Sabbath and the Sabbath what? Sabbath rest.
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Sabbath rest of the land. And he said, hey, they're going to go in and they're going to... the land's going to lay rest some way or another.
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God's going to get back what y 'all have basically perverted. So, in Daniel chapter 1, we see
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God give Judah into their hands. What does Nebuchadnezzar do? Takes a bunch of young men, young people, and land first.
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That's exactly what he does. And he takes them to the University of Babylon. And what's the purpose for taking them guys to Babylon?
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Indoctrinate them into the culture. Yes, that's right. Indoctrinate them into the culture. We often think of when they were taken in to slavery or taken in as exiles is they were chained around their necks.
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They were dragged off into another land as chattel slavery. That's not what took place.
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They were dragged off into another land to be treated very well, to be put into Babylon University to learn the language, learn the culture, learn and enjoy what was there so that then they would depart from the aesthetic way of living from which the
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Jewish were used to. Remember, the Jews basically were all shepherds and that's the kind of life that they lived.
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When they get to Babylon, anything you could imagine, them young men could have gotten themselves into.
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Any sensual pleasure, any type of food, and we'll talk about that just in a second.
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They could have gotten anything that they wanted with no supervision. Where's mom and dad?
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Back at Judah. Or dead. One or the other. When they went through the streets, when they came in that last time, the last group of exiles,
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Nebuchadnezzar, he wiped the city out. Wherever their families were at, the ones that held them accountable, they were either back at home or in Judah, dead, and they were on their own with no supervision.
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they were hauled off into captivity to be treated well. As they were there, what did
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Daniel do? They were told to eat the pleasures of the food.
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What did he do? He asked if he could be left out of that. If he could be the
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Yahweh veggie diet. That's right. Can we be left out? If you remember, what took place was he actually asked the chief of the guard, and what did he tell him?
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He said, you're crazy. If I come over here and I do what you asked me to do, and you come,
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I think one of them says, look haggardly. You look haggardly, and you look thinner.
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Nebuchadnezzar ain't gonna have it. I won't look like I'm doing my job, and he's gonna cut off my head. So what does he do?
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He goes to the next chain commander. What does Daniel do? He asks the next guy. He's like, dude, check it out. Just give us a chance.
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Ten days. Ten days. And let's see. And after ten days, what did it say they were?
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Meg should remember this. It says they were smarter and fatter. She was like, where are those young men at? They were fatter and they were smarter than the other guys.
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So, what did Daniel do in Daniel chapter 1? He put
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God to the test. He put him to the test. He said, okay, trust that God.
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He didn't pray. He didn't pray. He said, I'm going to trust God by not defiling ourselves with the food.
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If you remember correctly, did it have anything to do with food dietary restrictions?
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None. Because what did we see in Daniel 10? He was eating of the very same things in 10 that he abstained from in the beginning of the book because he didn't want to be lured into the seductiveness of the
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Babylonian Empire. Daniel 2. What took place?
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He had a dream to dream. Crazy dreams. Yeah. Not only did he have a crazy dream, it was so crazy, when he woke up, he forgot the dream.
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Not only did he forget the dream, he was upset he forgot the dream, but he needed to know what he forgot about the dream, so therefore he sent a decree out to all of who?
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The wizards. Yeah. Basically to the magicians guild, the conjurers, the wise men, and he said, hey,
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I need somebody to come in here and tell me what the dream is and its interpretation.
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And those guys came in there and said, okay, tell us what the dream is and we'll give you the interpretation.
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And Nebuchadnezzar said, I don't think you understand what I'm saying. What I'm telling you is you need to tell me the dream and what did the conjurer say?
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Nebuchadnezzar, you know how this works. You tell us the dream and then we make up something in your favor and then you like us and that's how it works.
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And he said, you know what? I'm tired of all of y 'all. I'm just going to kill all of y 'all.
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And he sends his captain of the guard, once again, sends him out and says, kill every one of the wise men in the land.
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Whose door do they knock on to be executed? Daniel. And what does
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Daniel say? Give me a day. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait. Why are you in such an uproar?
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We didn't hear anything about this. He said, tell Nebuchadnezzar, give me to the morning, basically, and I'll do it.
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And what does Daniel go back and do with his three friends? Pray.
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Pray. Pray. Pray that God would do what? Be compassionate.
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And we learned that that was actually what they were told to pray back in the prayer of, I think it's 2
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Kings chapter 8. He was told that when Solomon said, hey, Lord, when our people go into the land for being disobedient, pray that their captor would have compassion on them.
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And what did Daniel pray? Pray that he would have compassion and give us the answer to the dream.
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So, did you say something? No. Okay. So, Daniel 2, crazy dream.
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He gets a dream. What's the dream?
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This sets the trajectory for the whole book. What was the dream? The big tower
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The Colossus, yeah. And what was the Colossus? What were the kingdoms?
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If y 'all have forgot this, we have beat this drum. I've wrote it on the board for the last 10 weeks.
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Babylon. What was the most important?
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Messiah. Kingdom of Messiah.
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Now, how did he see this? That's not how he saw that. That's how we understand it, because he gives him success of, he saw a head of gold.
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And he saw a chest of silver. Two arms.
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Showing those legs of the Medo and Persians. And ultimately these wind up being overrun, but not quite yet.
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These, Cyrus the Great, he basically shows the Persian Empire to be bigger than Medo, who was a
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Median descent. And the Greeks were the what? Bronze.
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Romans were the legs of iron, feet with clay and iron.
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And what was the clay and iron a mixture of? Fragile. Do you remember what we it was the mixture of the
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Roman Empire and the Hasmonean Dynasty and all of those things where you had the
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Herods and all of them starting to get intertwined that don't mix. You have an imperialistic side and then you have a religious side that's trying to bring the
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Jewish times and the Romans together and dude, they don't mix. And they become fragile.
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And then it showed a stone cut without hands that was little itty bitty and it came down and as it what did that little stone do?
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Hit that thing like a bowling ball and shattered it. And then that little stone began to travel across time and become so big that then what did it do?
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It engulfed the whole earth. Now that was what he saw. What did
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Daniel tell Nebuchadnezzar that just drove him into absolute joy?
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He was the head. You're the man. You are the purest of it all because you're the gold.
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Which I think that sets up what takes place in chapter 3. We need to remember there's something that Daniel said,
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I think it's in chapter 2 verse 28. I think it's 228
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I think it says that Daniel tells him that God has Go ahead, somebody read it.
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There's a God in heaven who reveals mysteries and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.
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So what did he just tell Nebuchadnezzar? God has given you information that will take place.
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Does anybody say end of days? That's actually the literal translation.
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End of days. What will take place at the end of days? If you see what happened at the end of Daniel chapter 12, what did it say?
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This is the end of days. What's that? Somebody said something. What's that? Yeah, this was the end of days.
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So Nebuchadnezzar gets a vision of what's going to take place over the next 500 -600 years.
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In empire, not in detail. Not like we went through, but in large scope. He tells him
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God has given you the understanding, Nebuchadnezzar. God has given you this dream. I'm giving you the understanding and the interpretation of that dream and now you should be privileged to know that.
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He was so privileged. What did he do in chapter 3? He made the whole thing out of gold.
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Yep, he sure did. And it wasn't a pole. It was not a pole.
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It was an image. When it's used in scripture, that image, even in the Old Testament, by and large, that image was basically a statue of himself.
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And what did he want people to do? Bow to him. He said, alright, here's what we're going to do.
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He called basically all the satraps, all the governors, all the leaders, basically he had all the rulers of the land come the first time.
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And what did he say? Remember? He said, alright, check it out.
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I'm going to start playing this fancy music and when this fancy music starts playing, what is everybody supposed to do?
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Hit the ground. Hit the ground. And start bowing. And as they began to play the music, everybody hit the ground.
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The three young men. Who were those three young men? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
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Yep. And what did Nebuchadnezzar do at that point? Not yet.
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No, no. I think it's one translation says he was angered with fury that his face got disfigured.
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And he was so mad because he didn't do what he asked him to do. And he said, basically like what he told the magicians guild the first time,
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I don't think you're feeling that. He said, I'm going to do this one more time. And give you another chance.
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And what did those three young Hebrew men say? Probably in their teens, late teens, maybe early twenties at this point.
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I think that this probably took place about nine to ten years after they had been pulled into exile.
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So if they were fifteen, sixteen, they could have been anywhere between twenty and twenty -four years old.
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Somewhere around there. Could be wrong. But what did they tell him? Basically said, possibly
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God couldn't save us, but if He doesn't we're not going to worship. It doesn't matter what you say. We don't care what you say.
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Can you imagine saying that to a despot who had the power to do whatever he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted?
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They had already seen what he would do when he would go into other lands and conquer them.
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I mean, he was notorious for knocking people's houses down, chopping them up, their body parts, and leave them up in a heap.
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That's what he was notorious for. He was brutal. And, what's that?
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The young men had no fear of death. But hey, and that's a good point. Why did they have no fear of death?
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Their security wasn't enough. What's that? Because of their faith in God.
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They knew that their faith in God was far more important to what the physical thing could happen to their body.
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Even Jesus Himself says, hey, don't fear who can hurt the body.
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Who should you fear? You better fear the one that can throw not only your body into hellfire, but can throw your soul in there as well.
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That's who you should fear. And what did them young boys do? They said, or young men, they said, it doesn't matter.
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You play the music, you do whatever you want, we ain't going to bow. And is God able to save us?
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You better believe He is. But even if He doesn't, we won't bow.
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So, he says, I'm going to do it again. And what did they do? Sorry, we're not going to do it.
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So, they bound him up, threw them into the furnace, and that furnace was heated up seven times hotter than it was before, meaning it was as hot as it could.
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I don't think it actually had a dial on the side of it. They were twisting it. They heated it up as much as they could, and it was just so hot.
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And think about how hot that had to be. Either it was the flames that consumed the men, or it was so hot that as they got there, when they burned people alive, normally it wasn't the flames that killed them.
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It sucks the oxygen out of you. Like when they burn people at the stake, in the time of the
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Reformation and all, the Inquisitions and all, they set it up in such a way so that as the flames came up, it pulls the oxygen out of your body.
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They actually didn't burn to death, per se. And the question is, well, why were they burning them to death?
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Well, they had to do something to discard the body, because that body was considered in the time of the
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Reformation, was considered deemed heresy, and heresies have to be burned and discarded. Anyway.
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In this case, was it so hot that it sucked the air out of that soldier, or was it so hot that the flames actually torched him?
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The heat, yeah. Did that happen? I have no idea, but we know this. When they got up there, it was so hot it killed the very ones that were being...
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It's funny. Funny. Ironic. That the very ones that were being disobedient to the kings, their lives were saved, and the one that was being obedient to throw them into the flames was the one that was consumed.
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It's just the irony. So here it is. They're thrown down into it, and as they're thrown down into it, what happens?
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Well, they get unbound, because they're bound up first, and they get unbound, and then they're walking in the middle of the fire, and Nebuchadnezzar walks over and he's like, what's going on?
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Yeah, I mean, what were they thinking when they were in there? I mean,
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I'd have been like, dude, these Babylonian clothes are pretty tough. You're like, man, these clothes here got through a fire retardant.
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You know? Because they threw them in with all their clothes on, and they're just walking around, and as they're walking around, who appears?
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I think the pre -incarnate Christ. I'm not going to disagree with that.
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We don't know for sure, but hey, I said early on, hey, I'm not going to argue with that. We know this, that whoever that person was in there, whether it was a pre -incarnate
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Christ or an angel that came, it was an absolute theophany that the presence of God was with them preserving them through the fire.
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Then what happens? Nebuchadnezzar is shocked.
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He's like, hey, I'm not, I haven't lost my mind too far yet, but I threw three dudes in there, and there's now four walking in there, and one of them looks like, and I think
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King James says son of God, but it's actually one of the sons of the gods. It's actually because he was not a believer.
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Okay? So as he is saying, hey, man, there's something in there, and that's different.
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And what does he do? He hollers in there, hey, Shadrach, Meshach, like no big deal now.
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Hey, no big deal. Hey, guys, come on up out of there. And it did, well, it certainly changed, and we see that because he makes a decree.
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His attitude changes because not only has this very God that they were unwilling to cower to, okay, and mean, cower to the, they would rather cower under, hey, if I'd be disobedient to the
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God of all, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I could be cast into hellfire. That's an argument for another day.
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Or, if I obey this king, then they choose their poison better.
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Okay? So here it is. Nebuchadnezzar sees that, and he is astonished of their faith.
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It says basically that in the text. He was astonished of their faith and that they were unwilling to disobey the
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God and would rather disobey the king. And God then preserved their life, and somebody can read the decree.
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He makes a no -blasphemy law, basically. He takes them out. They don't smell like smoke.
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They don't smell like burnt bricks, and I don't know about y 'all, but I can't light a grill without smelling like caught on fire.
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And these guys came out, fully dressed, nothing wrong with them. Imagine, and the text doesn't say this, but imagine them going back and talking to Daniel, because we know
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Daniel wasn't here when this happened, because if Daniel would have been here, he'd have been thrown in there where there wouldn't have been four people in there, there'd have been five.
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Okay? We understand that. But imagine them going back to Daniel saying, Daniel, check this out, man, we saw the angel of the
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Lord. And Daniel was probably jealous.
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Jealous. Daniel didn't see the angel of the Lord for probably some 60 years.
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Imagine him thinking about that. Man, I sure wish I could have been there, but then, remember, 60 years later, what happens?
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He's thrown into the lion's den, and who comes and shuts the mouth of the lion? The angel of the
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Lord. So they're taken out, they're put into, they get, not only do they get taken out of the fire, no blasphemy law is then imposed, not talked about, and they get another promotion.
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Then, what happens in Daniel 4? Yep. What was this dream?
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Nebuchadnezzar took his place. Sure was. This one really gave him some consternation.
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He remembered the dream. He remembered what took place. He remembered what it was all about. And it's funny to me that he calls in these same people to come in that Daniel had saved their life.
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He calls them to come in and gives them another interpretation of the dream.
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And they can't, but who's he call? Go get Daniel. Go get Daniel. Daniel comes in and what does
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Daniel tell him about the dream? The compassion that we see towards Daniel, towards Nebuchadnezzar. He says,
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O king, I wish this was about your enemies and not about you. And basically, he calls him to repentance.
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Basically says, hey, this is about you, because you have not believed and trusted that this is the
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Lord that has put you in the position that you have put in, that you're in now. And because you have rejected and you think that it is you that have done this, you are going to be like the beast of the field.
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You're going to grow hair on your back. You're going to crawl around on your face, your fingernails, toedails.
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You're going to become beast -like. And he said, oh, okay.
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One year later, what happens? Exact same thing.
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Just as basically walking on the wall of his palace going, the world is my oyster.
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Look what I have done. And it says that very moment, he was struck.
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And he became beast -like. Until, and what did the dream say?
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This is what God's going to do to you until you learn and recognize and repent that there is a
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God in heaven who what he puts his hand to, no one can thwart it. And that's exactly what took place.
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He then became like a beast. He then came to, quote, his senses, and he cried out, and he saw that God was the one that put him in this place.
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I know there is some debate about Isaiah 14, whether that's about Satan or whatever, but if you go back and you read that,
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Isaiah 14 is talking about the fall of the king of Babylon who claimed to be the one that was like God, one who wanted to be like God, and it was him that made himself.
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If you go back and read it, that is about the king of Babylon. Now, whether it was the prediction of the fall of Nebuchadnezzar, or whether it was the prediction of the fall of Belshazzar, there's no doubt it's an oracle concerning the fall of the king of Babylon.
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Isaiah 14? And it's talking about the fall of Babylon and its king who claimed himself to be like God.
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What did he do in chapter 3? He wanted to be worshipped like God.
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What did he do in chapter 4? He had the opportunity to say, hey man, you're not the one who's done this.
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It's the God in heaven who has raised you up. It's the God of heaven that raises up kingdoms and throws them down.
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And Nebuchadnezzar said, I won't buy it. Then what happens in chapter 5?
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Belshazzar makes a feast and a finger appears on the wall. Yeah, the hand writing on the wall.
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Once again, you have an arrogant king who thinks he's the one that can do what he wants when he wants and how he wants, and what did he do?
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He brought in the very things that his grandfather had taken out of the temple and he began to desecrate them by having a party with his concubines and all.
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I think when we went through chapter 5, I said that it's interesting that the very thing that lights the wall,
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I believe, was the menorah that they had lit for their party. And what does that menorah do? It brought in the implements for the party, but the menorah would have been huge setting bulbs on it.
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It would glue up the holy of holies. I'm sorry, the inner sanctum, the most holy place, it glowed in there.
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Imagine this glowing, the writing on the wall of God who put his hand up there and he said, whatever it is.
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And he says, tonight your kingdom's over. And what we do know from Babylonian cuneiform and from the cylinder of Cyrus, they basically went in and it was almost a bloodless overthrow.
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Interesting too, when we get to Revelation, the very thing of how they overthrow Babylon is brought up when they dry up the river
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Euphrates. You know that's how they came in and took Babylon. Cyrus dug up and rerouted the river
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Euphrates so that they could go in under and call the fall of Babylon. That's how Babylon fell.
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And it was very easily done once they rerouted the river. Chapter 6.
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Chapter 6. The Lion's Den. What's that? The Lion's Den.
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This would probably be the most famous story. Of course, I hate to say story, but thing that happened in the book.
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We often don't hear about the dreams as much. We hear about this. We hear about Daniel in the
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Lion's Den. Why was he put in the Lion's Den? He refused to stop praying.
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It was the decree to pray to no one. And why did those men go to Darius the
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Mede, Peter Cyrus the Great? Why did they go to him? Jealousy. Anybody remember what it said that Daniel was fixing to become at that point?
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Daniel was fixing to become second in the kingdom. And they knew that there's no way that we can...
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This man is a man of integrity. If we're going to ever catch him in anything, it's going to be how he worships his
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God. So what did they do? They make up a law so you can't bow down and pray to anybody for 30 days.
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Just 30 days. 30 days. And Cyrus the
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Great, Darius the Mede signs that decree. And it's almost as if in signing it, he knew he'd been bamboozled.
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These guys have an intent to harm Daniel. But what did
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Daniel do? Hey, you know what Daniel could have done? He could have said, alright, it's only for 30 days.
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I ain't got to open the window, pray towards Jerusalem, which is how
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David did that. He said, I'm going to go into captivity. It's all predicted. How that would take place or what they were supposed to do when they were in captivity wasn't superstitious.
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But he could have said, you know what? I'm not going to do that. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to walk around.
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I'm going to do a prayer walk around the city. He could have signed any other thing to do for 30 days. But what did he do?
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He did exactly what he did like he had done years ago. He opened up his window, prayed toward heaven three times a day.
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They haul him off. They're going to throw him into the lion's den. Darius the Mede says,
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I've got to figure out a way of doing this. And what did they tell him? The law of the Medes and the
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Persians. You can't. You can't. You remember what Darius told him? I believe
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God's going to save you in the morning. And we, you read through that text.
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You don't know what Daniel's doing all night. We don't. It doesn't say.
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But what was Darius doing all night? He was worrying. And it said when dawn came, what did
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Darius do? He ran to what he thought was going to be a tomb.
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And he ran to that and he said, Daniel. He didn't say
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Belshazzar. He said Belshazzar. He said Daniel. And Daniel said what?
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Hey, imagine Darius' joy when he heard, Long live the king!
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You're just, man, it's probably 80 years old. Like Jack thrown down in the hole down there. Laughter Yeah, and here it says,
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Long live the king! Your God has saved you. Pull him up.
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What did they do to all those men? Who went with them?
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Their wives and their children. And it said that when they threw them down before they hit the bottom, their bones were crushed.
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Bones were crushed. Don't mess with God's man. Yes, he did. Yeah, he did.
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Daniel 7 and 8. The reason why I put them up there is because they're somewhat connected. What took place in Daniel 7 and 8?
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Is that the beasts? Remember, the beasts come in here. You've got the four beasts. One's talking about, in chapter 7, it's the one that goes through and it talks about the fierce one that is that hybrid and it winds up being the
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Roman Empire and he gives him basically an exposition. But out of these two, this one winds up being
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Greece. This one is Rome. do you remember there was something that came out of both of these which sets a trajectory which we'll get into when we get to Revelation?
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Do you remember where this little horn was? What did the little horn do? It's a blasphemer.
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And he sees one first in chapter 7 comes up out of the Roman Empire and if we're pointing this back to when it happens in the
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Roman Empire, the same thing said in chapter 11, 12, and 13 of Revelation about this very thing.
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But then who is the one in Greece that becomes the little horn? Antiochus IV.
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So that's the part where like it's a little horn, but it can't be the same horn because one's in Rome and one's in Greece, right?
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Well there's two horns. There's two. There's one that raises itself up in the
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Roman Empire, persecutes, speaks blasphemous things against the people of God, and then another one comes up in the previous empire, in the
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Grecian Empire, because remember that Greece comes before Rome and I don't know why the
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Revelation happened this way, Revelation meaning why it happened in this order to him, but this is how it happened.
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The only thing I know is that this little horn is a trajectory on little horns that will raise themselves up against the people of God for generations to come.
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I mean, we could think about right now, people that persecute the people of God in other countries that want to be worshipped as God.
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Think about the little fat guy over there in North Korea. Okay? You have to have a picture of him in your house and you have to worship him.
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You know he does to the people of God? He enslaves them. Think about Stalin during the Soviet block.
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Sure. Just Christians getting killed all over. Sure. So they raised themselves up in every generation, which
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I think sets a trajectory and we'll get into that when we get into Revelation because I do think that is the best way of understanding that part of that text.
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Well, what happens in Daniel 9? Probably the most confusing last three verses of all of Daniel.
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He gets a vision. The 77's. And that 77's was given to Daniel to let him know what was going to happen to the holy people.
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But there was a messianic prophecy within it that prepared them to know that God was going to do away with the transgression.
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He was going to do away with sin. He was going to provide everlasting righteousness. But in doing so, how when that took place, what was going to happen to the holy people, meaning the
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Jewish people and the Jewish holy place? It was going to be destroyed.
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Historically and theologically aren't at the same time. Theologically, God does away with Judaism at the death, burial, resurrection and exaltation of Christ.
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The temple is absolutely useless at that point. It was just typological. It was just a picture.
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It was a type and shadow. So as you see a shadow, as a kid, you run and you can kind of watch your shadow go.
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Once you've run out of the sun, once the substance of who you are is standing right there and you're no longer looking at the shadow, the shadow is absolutely useless.
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It just was showing you what was coming. Well, now that the substance of who
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Christ is has come, the temple was absolutely useless. Every sacrifice from the time that they put the nails in Jesus' hands, and He said it is finished.
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Every sacrifice at that point moving forward was an abomination. It was blasphemous, but God was very patient for some 40 years.
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Remember what the temple was for the next 40 years or up until 66?
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What did they do at the temple? What did the apostles go and do? They used it as a place to evangelize.
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I mean, imagine going up and then, man, hey, you and your son don't have to do this anymore.
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The true Lamb has come. I mean, what did Paul say? Christ, our
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Passover Lamb, or our Paschal Lamb has come. No need to do this anymore.
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Hebrews say, if you will go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, meaning you continue to give those sacrifices that are an abomination to God, and you put faith in those sacrifices, those blood and bulls and goats that could never change, could never take away sin, you keep on doing that, the only thing that remains for you is a fiery indignation of a wrathful
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God that will consume His adversaries. That's what he was saying. And that is exactly what would take place.
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That was all prophecy. That's what was going to take place. Then what happens in the longest vision?
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We've got to hurry up. What happens here?
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The most detailed prophetic part of Daniel's book by far.
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Daniel's strength falls. His strength fails. And I believe his strength fails because he's still struggling over the fact that God's going to make an utter desolation of His people.
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And then, he's fasting in 10, remember? He was already feeling weak and sick.
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Then all of a sudden, thunder, whatever, something, and the old man's left by himself by the river.
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And he gets a vision. He gets a vision from the pre -incarnate Christ.
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We believe that because the very things that his description of who he is is then picked up on in Revelation chapter 1,
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I think around verses 8, 13, somewhere there. And he gets another vision.
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And he gets a vision of what's going to take place and how it's going to lead up and it's going to be from probably around 536 up until the final 70
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A .D. B .C. to 70 A .D. That's how long. Some 600 years roughly. That's the vision that he gets.
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And God gives him specific things and markers to write down so they know when these things will take place.
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It goes through everything from the Persian kings, which will lead to the rise of Alexander the
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Great, which would then lead to the fall of Alexander the Great, which would lead to the splintering up of the nation, the empire into four winds of the earth, and then it would lead to one that would raise itself up to be that little horn that would persecute people of God, which would come out of the
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Grecian empire. And then he talks about what would take place after the
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Grecian empire. There would be a Roman empire that would come. And during that Roman empire what would take place?
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The rebellion against the Jews. I mean the Jews' rebellion against the
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Romans. And what would the Romans do? God would use them as a scourge against the covenant people because they had rejected the
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Messiah. They rejected the Messiah. And that is the most detailed passage in Daniel.
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Actually, in my understanding and I could be wrong, y 'all could check it, I don't think there's any other detailed prophetic passage in all of the
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Bible that detailed. At all. I mean it gives you specifics on who is going to come after who.
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I mean, it tells you, hey, there's three Persian kings and one will come after him and be richer than them all.
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And he will stir up the place of the Greeks. The Greeks were nobodies at that point. Then it starts to get into more specifics.
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And like I said before, liberals, that's why they date the book after all these things happened.
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There's no way that Daniel could have known these things were going to take place. And we say, yeah we can. Because there's a
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God in heaven who holds all things in His hands and what He puts His hand to, nobody can stop it.
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So we do need to understand that through the whole book of Daniel, one thing is that God is the one who is in control of absolutely everything.
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From putting Jehoiakim into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar and putting the people of God, meaning the covenant people of God, the
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Jews, into the hands of the Romans to be slaughtered. God did that. Through all of that time frame, what do we know about Daniel?
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The Lord stayed with him. Yes, and that made him faithful. He was faithful.
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He was faithful. He was not one of these you know, taking a stiff upper lip, marine, he was just a faithful man that we saw him praying in chapter 2 that God would have compassion on them.
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And then what do we see at the end of the book? The same thing. Him praying, asking
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God. He even wanted God to give him some more information. And then you look at the last verse,
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I think it's of Daniel, chapter 12, we'll go. He doesn't answer any of his questions, doesn't give him some numbers that we don't even know really what they're about.
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Nobody knows. But he does say something very encouraging to Daniel and to any
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Jewish person. He says, go your own way, Daniel, and you will receive your allotted portion.
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From a Jewish person's mind, what was their allotted portion?
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The promise of the land. The promise of the land. The promise of the land.
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So he's like, Daniel, you're still in a place of exile. You're still in a place.
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You've not gone back to the land, but you're going to be raised because he actually says that. If you read it at the end, you're going to be raised.
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You and your people. And you will receive your allotted portion.
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Now Daniel understood that as being, he was of the descendants of Judah. He would have the tribe of Judah in the land of what we would say today is
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Palestine. That's probably how he understood that. But how do we understand that? Now that we have the full revelation of what
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God has prepared for His people, He is going to enjoy not only a little old piece of land in Palestine, He is going to enjoy the whole world because we're promised a new heavens and a new earth where there won't ever be another rebellion.
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There won't ever be another exile. God will banish all of His enemies. They will forever be cast into the lake of fire, and we will live in utter bliss with Christ and our
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Savior forever and ever and ever. Now, Daniel didn't understand it quite like that. Okay?
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Because he can only get prophesied in the structure in which God had already prepared. But because of progressive revelation, that's how we understand that.
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35 seconds for questions. I tried to get 10 minutes for us but it just didn't work.
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Next week we will start the book of Revelation. And I don't know how long we're going to be in the introduction.
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I know it's not going to be one week. It's probably going to be a couple. It's the most difficult book in all of Scripture.
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Certainly the most difficult in the New Testament. A close run into it is probably the book of Ezekiel.
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If you don't believe me, read the book of Ezekiel and then you'll know. So, Smith, will you pray for us?
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Absolutely. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this study that we've had in the book of Daniel.
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We thank You for our brother as he has spent great deals of time to faithfully bring that to us.
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He has looked to You for wisdom. We thank You for the blessing it has been to have this study.
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We look forward to beginning with Revelation. The huge area of the next
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Lord's Day. We pray that You'd be with us as we go into the worship service.
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We pray that You'd be with your man as he brings Your Word. We pray that You would use him as Your conduit to speak truth to us, to strengthen us in our faith, and to save the lost.
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We pray that all that's said and done would glorify You. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. ... ...