Introduction to Daniel

I pray that we have a chance to come today and hear your word preached and open it up to us. Lord, I ask that you would bless Brother Mike as he is prepared for this and spent many hours doing that.

I ask that you would bless him for that. And that you would just open it up to us and give us things that we can apply. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. Well, I'm glad the young people are with us because Daniel is very important to how young people should live and act in a society that's ungodly.

And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Daniel were good examples.

Now, I'm going to say some words and I want you all to tell me what's connected to it.

Adam and? Ye. Noah and? Blood. Orc.

Ark. Okay. Samson and? Lion. Yeah.

Oh yeah. How about that. Okay. Daniel? Lion's Den. And I will assure you after, if you all can stay with me long enough, the

Lion's Den will probably not be the first thing that comes to mind. That is what we normally think of.

You know, there's so much more with Daniel than the lions, how that is good and great. There's so much more to the narrative of what he did and his role in redemptive history.

Now, this is going to be some history. So we can bring you up to where we're at historically and politically with what's going on.

In 640, this will all be B .C., okay, before Christ comes.

640, a man named Josiah comes. I'm going to crack again.

Josiah comes to power at eight years old, okay. Then, 13 years after him being in power, a man comes along named

Jeremiah. And he begins to prophesy. Okay.

Right? We good so far? Jeremiah begins to prophesy after Josiah has made great reforms, though.

And he begins to prophesy and talk about how God's going to judge his people.

He's going to haul them off into captivity. And everything that Jeremiah says has been said before by the prophet

Isaiah. So when we get to what we're fixing to talk about, this should not have been a shock to the people of God or the covenant people of God.

So, in the time of Jeremiah, you would have had, these are key dates, too.

609, Josiah is told not to go to battle at Megiddo. And he goes.

Anybody remember why he was told not to go? Anybody know that story? All right.

Egypt was coming across to meet what was left over of the Assyrians and the Babylonians and to fight.

He was going to wipe them out so that Egypt would become the new superpower at that time.

He's coming across, the way that he had to come across, he had to cross to Israel to meet them in the valley of Megiddo, which is in the

Jezreel Valley. In order to do so, he had to come across the land of Judah. Josiah says, you ain't doing that.

He says, you're not coming across. And he says, let me tell you something, Josiah. God told me to tell you. Your God told me to tell you.

If you come out and meet me, I am going to kill you. And Josiah dressed up as a normal fighter and he went out and he was killed.

So in 609, Egypt then becomes, the

Egypt then becomes basically the ruler over Israel and Israel becomes a vassal state to Egypt.

Therefore, they're paying it to Pharaoh Necho at this time. So, and this leads us to 605.

605, Nebuchadnezzar is now going to rule the world, per se.

He goes against Egypt. He wipes Egypt out in 605 at the

Battle of Carchemish. Now, he is the ruler and Israel becomes a vassal state of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar.

They remove the

Jehoiah hat which had come into place after Josiah's death and they put in a man by the name of Jehoiah.

When he puts him in place, in power, Jehoiah can decide he's going to throw off Babylon.

Remember, he's paying, he's supposed to pay tribute to Nebuchadnezzar. This leads to this event.

605, they are, become a vassal state. He tries to throw off Babylon.

603, this is when the

Babylonian exile begins. Okay, 603. This is when Daniel is hauled off into captivity.

There's three deportations. This is the first. Most of us are probably familiar with this date, correct?

Anybody know what this date is in history? This is the actual destruction of Jerusalem in 586.

We often don't think about these two dates being very significant in Babylonian captivity because we think the

Babylonian captivity started here. It did not. It started up here.

It started with the first deportation of exiles to Babylon and Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in that.

Just a little historical. This one would be Ezekiel.

He would go in this one. And it's interesting that in the book of Ezekiel, when he is beginning to prophesy,

I think in chapter 14, he's talking about the coming destruction of Jerusalem.

In this date, he says three people. He says even if Noah, Job, and Daniel were in that city,

God would not save them. Even the righteousness of those three men, God was not going to save the city from the coming destruction.

So that's what leads us to this date here. This is when

Daniel is hauled off into captivity. His prophetic ministry begins in 601 and goes to about 536 to 534.

This is debatable depending on when you see he wrote and did not.

So everybody following me so far? Too many numbers? Too many dates? This is significant when we get through the book.

This date is going to be very significant when we get to the book and we get to Cyrus' decree to send them back.

I just want you to know that this date is very significant determining what is the 70 years of captivity, how long was it, when did it end, and all of that.

So, Daniel prophesies from this time to this time. The structure of the book is this.

1 -6 is narrative, historical narrative.

And then 7 -12, prophetic ministry.

Actually, this should be apocalyptic too. Apocalyptic.

Because with all the other prophets before, Daniel makes a shift in how the apocalyptic visions come.

Not many of the apocalyptic visions before, like stuff that we've talked about like Zechariah and those kind of guys, theirs wasn't beasts and horns and all of that.

Daniel's is going to be beasts and horns and statues and stuff like that. So this is going to be historical narrative, what took place.

Then, this is going to be divisions that he gets. Now, that is not in chronological order.

That's not how the book is written in chronology. Come on little buddy.

You can sit on Mr. Mike's lap. Bounce him on his knee.

Bounce him on his knee. Sit here, he's going to get you a chair. Yeah, this is not in chronological order.

So as you're reading, if you're reading through Daniel, and I would ask that y 'all this week try to read through the book so you can get a feel of what the book's about and where you're going to go.

Okay, wait a minute. He was in Babylon. Now, Darius is here.

Well, now he's back with Belshazzar. Okay, so it's not written in chronological order.

But how I will teach the book will be. Because I believe it helps the mind.

I like things linear. Thank you.

Straight. And Hebrew prophetic stuff is by and large, it's not.

You read the book of Jeremiah, here there, there there, over here. You're like, wait a minute, this guy just died way back in chapter 7 and now he's alive again in chapter 36 or something crazy in Jeremiah.

Well, that's why I'm going to teach this in chronological order so that you can see how things are building.

The chronology of it, though, is going to be 1 through 4. Chapters 1 through 4.

Then it jumps to 7 and 8. Then 5 and 6.

Then 9. That's how it will be. Now, you're going to come to a couple of areas where...

Go turn to Daniel. And go to...

I think it's chapter 10.

Just a second. Yeah, at the end of chapter 10, you're having the angel talk to him.

And then when you get to... He's in the middle of talking and you get to verse 11.

It goes, In the first year Darius the Mede, I arose to be encouraged and protect him.

And behold, I will tell you the truth. And behold, three more kings are coming to arise in Persia. And then it begins on to talk about the

Persian Empire. That act... Where are you? 10, the end, and then 11.

Oh, 10 and then chapter 11. I was at verse 11. I'm sorry. 10. And you see where he says,

However, I will tell you what is inscribed in the writing. This is the angel talking. It starts a new chapter in 11.

That's why you're going to wait a minute. The chronology has to be wrong. But the angel is still talking in chapter 11.

And he's saying, Hey, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I arose up to encourage and protect him.

That's not giving the chronology of what's taking place. The angel's saying it was in the first year of Darius that I began to protect him.

Okay? Follow me? That's how... Because if you go back up to verse 1 of 10, what does it say?

In the third year. Okay, you understand? Now, he's telling you... Daniel's telling you when this has taken place.

But then the angel at the end of 10 and 11 is telling you when he began to rise up and protect

Darius. Understand? No? Nobody? Got it?

I know you do. Mike's got a little... Mike's going to have some answers when he gets to some of these chapters, probably, if he sticks around that long.

Anyway, so that's why some of the chronology looks really way off.

And that's why if we teach it this way and have it unfolded, then we won't have all... I know why

Hebrew literature has done it this way. They want you to see all the narratives, and then they want you to have all the prophetic and apocalyptic stuff all together.

I understand that. But in my mind, as I was reading and studying the book, it doesn't unfold that way.

You want things to build on one another. And as you get to the visions, the visions do build on one another, and they do take place in some of this, in the historical narrative.

So, like, if somebody would turn over to chapter 2, I think it's in chapter 2, you've got the vision of the...

the vision, or not the vision, the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. That actually is one of the,

I would say, part of the hinge that holds the book together. Because it talks about, he has some crazy dream.

And he's wanting somebody to tell him what it is. And there is, when we get to that, we'll walk through it.

But some people believe that he's forgotten the dream. Some people believe that, hey, Nebuchadnezzar had this dream, he's calling all his soothsayers and stuff to come in, and he's wanting them to tell him the dream he forgot, and the interpretation, okay?

I don't believe that's the case. I believe that he is actually wanting some of his soothsayers,

I want you to tell me the dream that I had. I want you to tell me the dream that I had and its interpretation.

And I believe he's telling that because he knows they're all hucksters. Okay? He knows that his guys are used to telling him what he wants to hear.

But God had given him this dream, and it made, it gave him so much consternation that he's like, you know what,

I've got to know what this is, I want to know what it is, and I want to know what it means, but I want somebody to tell me what the dream is so I know that they're not lying to me.

We know this, that the soothsayers and the diviners and all that, dude, they were yes -men.

I mean, they understood that Nebuchadnezzar understood that you're supposed to tell us the dream, and we just make something up.

We make something up that's good about you. That's not what he wants. So, he gets the vision of a statue, and the statue deals with these four kingdoms.

Babylon, I'm just going to use this for short. Babylon, Medo -Persian,

Greece, and then the Roman Empire. That here is going to be the four kingdoms, by and large, that the book deals with.

But there is a fifth kingdom, Messiah's kingdom.

This right here makes this book messianic, because when we get to this part, that statue is all made up of these parts, but it's of one whole, one whole.

This is the world system, just to let you know. So, when we look at Babylon, the Medo -Persian, the

Greeks, and the Romans, this is going to be the world system. And its desire is to crush this stone that's made without hands when it comes.

But when we get to that, this stone is made without hands. It's little, and it comes out of nowhere, and it's going to obliterate the statue that he has.

Now, when you go to chapter 7, it talks of the same four kingdoms.

Same four kingdoms. It just gives them in lions.

Thank you. Lion, lion, goat, ram, bear, bear with teeth.

It's got all that, but you still have Messiah's kingdom coming. So, understand, as we go through these, it's given these visions of animals, and I'm going to explain what they are.

Matter of fact, as the visions come, or the dream comes, the interpretation comes with Daniel.

So, we don't have to guess. There's at times when Daniel says, hey,

I know what you said about this thing. Can you please explain it to me?

And the angel says, you know what? I sure will. And then he tells him, you have four kings coming after this king and that king, and he gives him specific details.

That's why eggheaded liberals and historical scholars say that Daniel was written after the second century

B .C. Because the prophetic detail that's fulfilled to the actual

T, I mean, with the details, they said there's no way that anybody could do that.

Nobody. Well, if we believe, like I should say, since we believe in the supernatural, and we believe that God can tell men and women what is going to take place in the future, of course we believe that.

But if you don't believe in the supernatural, then you have to say that this didn't take place. Now, I just want to say

I have a book in my office that I bought, and it's an overview Bible study, and it says the book of Daniel was written later because it couldn't have known these things.

If I can find it, I'll bring it to you. Joyce Ball, I don't know if you all know who she is. She's a chick. Good commentator.

Well, hey, I might say Meredith Klein through this, and somebody might go, Meredith? That's a dude.

Okay? So Joyce Ball. And she's good. She's a good commentator. Actually, her book on her commentary on Daniel, it's not big.

It's about this thick, but about this long. It's about this thick. It's small, but her commentary was not nearly as good as far as exhaustive as what she led up to the beginning part of the book.

It's historical detail and all that. I wish you just spent more time giving commentary on the conclusions of the book, but she laid out very clear that, hey, if you believe in the supernatural, then no reason to believe that it was written 200 years after the fact.

Look, we're going to talk about Alexander the Great. We're going to talk about Xerxes.

I mean, there is a lot of things that take place in Daniel's prophecy that take place in history that,

I mean, when I studied the book the first time, absolutely jaw -dropping, the detail.

And not only does it do that, it points to stuff that take place with the rise of Alexander the

Great and what he does and they splinter off into four empires and all of that. But it also points to a time when

God's people will be persecuted in 166 B .C.

by a man named Antiochus. This guy right here will set the stage for what we would see as, quote, quote, the prototype of the

Antichrist. This dude here, ruthless to the people of God.

And Daniel, in the book, when he says, hey, there's a fourth kingdom coming, the vision that he gets, and he says, can you explain it to me?

He gives it in detail. He doesn't say his name, but he gives it in detail of what this cat's going to do.

He's going to come, and he's going to persecute the people of God. He's going to try to change the times and the seasons.

He's going to cut off their law. He's going to make circumcision absolutely taboo.

If you get circumcised, you get put to death. Matter of fact, when we get to that point, we're going to read parts of the

Maccabees, which is a historical book of the Apocrypha, but it's historical, not authoritative.

It's not Scripture, but it is good historical, accurate narrative.

When women would have their boys circumcised on the eighth day, he would slit their throats and make them carry the baby around their neck through the city.

This is how ruthless this guy is. Antiochus Epiphanes is the name that he gave himself for God manifest.

Antiochus for God manifest. What the people gave him name was Antiochus Epiphanes, madman.

See the little play on words? That's the difference. somebody say something?

So, he points out this guy. But then as you get through the book, he points to someone that's sort of like this guy in the

Roman Empire, which we would see as being Nero. So you see, the prophetic detail which

Daniel's giving is one, is to take the people of God and encourage them to continue to go on.

And it's taking those who are compromising and telling them to repent and go on. And if you look at the messages in Revelation, to the same message that is portrayed in Daniel, they're almost identical in that sense.

The people of God are to continue to carry on in the book of Revelation. Remember, to compromise the church you're called to what?

In Revelation, to repent. Or to repent. Repent. Repent. And then the ones that are doing what they're supposed to do, they're called to continue on.

To persevere. To persevere. And that is the message of Daniel to the people of God. Any questions or comments so far?

No? No? Yes, sir? You would say that was the reason that Daniel got those visions.

Like, that would be the purpose. Would you say that was the purpose? Yeah, I think as you go through, there's probably multiple, but certainly one of them is those.

Because remember, in 6 .03, as horrible as that was, them being hauled off into captivity, this wasn't as devastating as 5 .86

would be. Remember, Daniel's in captivity working, actually having a good life when the temple's destroyed.

And he is preparing them for what's going to take place. He is preparing them.

No doubt. And it's interesting, Daniel being prepared for what would take place in 5 .86,

in chapter 9, he's actually reading the prophet Jeremiah. You understand, man,

Daniel would have been born at the time of Josiah. He would have been hearing the proclamation of Jeremiah.

To me, that's amazing. And then this kid, probably 13, 16 years old, hauled off into captivity.

And that would have been, if he'd have been 13, 16, 67 years later, 70 years later, he'd have been in his early 80s, he would have been reading the prophet

Jeremiah. Where did he get that scroll? Anybody think of that? I believe he had one with him.

And I believe, because he was a man of God, and because he had good relationships with leaders, if he says, hey man,

I would like this, or I would like this, he had, look, I don't know that for sure, but he had the ability to do that.

Remember, Daniel was well taken care of. There's two prophets.

We often think about Nebuchadnezzar. He was ruthless, right? I mean, we read this, he likes chopping people up, their body parts, making their houses into heaps of dung.

Okay, he says that. But there's two people he takes well care of. One, Daniel, and the other, believe it or not, was

Jeremiah. You know who protected Jeremiah from being killed? Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar. Because Jeremiah was telling the people, when you go into captivity, put yourself under the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar.

If you put yourself under the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, it'll be good for you. And even, I believe that when this happens to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we'll talk about that when we get to chapter 3, and 1, when they're hauled off into captivity,

I believe that they remember the words of Jeremiah. When you go into captivity, not if, when you go into captivity, you pray for the peace of the land, you pray for the good of the people, you plant vineyards, you plant fields, you marry your wives there for the good of the land, so that you may prosper.

Because if that land prospers, where you're going into captivity, you will prosper too. Well, that was the message of Jeremiah.

Put yourself under the yoke. That was the message of Daniel. Look, this is where God's got us.

Therefore, we've got to submit to basically His chastisement.

Anything so far? Anything? Again? Any? Any? Any? It's possible.

We don't know for sure. It's possible. We believe that they came from that area. We don't know for sure.

They obviously had the scrolls to read. So it's possible. It's possible.

Yes, sir? One more question I have. Nowadays, look at Daniel. He's just taken and piecemealed and futuristic and all sorts of things.

Was there people back in those times that were trying to take it and make it futuristic?

Obviously, it would still have been futuristic in their time. But were there people in the Jewish community who were trying to pervert it?

Not that I know of one. They had no idea. 2 ,000 years reserved. They had no idea.

And he gives specific detail of this is what's going to happen to your people under the

Greek Empire. Antiochus was part of the Greek Empire.

But when it splintered into four... Alexander the Great dies. We'll get into more detail.

When Alexander the Great died, his four generals split the Greek Empire into four different areas.

One took... I think it was Ptolemy. Yeah, Ptolemy took Egypt. Seleucus took

Persia, Syria. And Cassander took

Thrace and Asia Minor. And I can't remember the other guy's name right now.

But the other general went up more north. Well, the two that rise up to be the most prominent out of the

Greek Empire splinter was the Ptolemies and the Seleucid. So those guys constantly fought against one another.

And in Chapter 11, in specific detail, it talks about those two fighting, one coming from the north, one coming from the south.

One of them defeats one of the Seleucid Empire, defeats the Ptolemies. So he decides, hey,

I want some more money, so he's going to go to the Holy Land. He attacks the temple. That's when all that takes place in 166.

It specifically tells what he's going to do, how he's going to do it. That's why they just say, hey, there's no way this dude could have known that this was going to take place in this type of detail.

But as far as the futuristic stuff that you're talking about now, you're more talking about the 70 weeks and all that.

No, no. And I would even say, I know most of your Bibles do say 70 weeks.

I don't think that's the accurate way of saying it, the 77s, because it doesn't mean weeks.

There's a word for weeks. It means 77s. When we get there, that's going to take some time.

That's not something we can just hurtle through because there's so much baggage that comes along with that.

You have the dispensational view, and then you have the more preteristic view, which would be the view that I hold that had already taken place.

The futuristic view says, hey, man, this is talking about the Antichrist, and the vernacular does not really allow you to do that.

You have to make that text mean that. Well, the historical books that we have written after and in that time would be the

Maccabees, in that era, I should say, would be the Maccabees that we will look at. Then, there is some historical prophetic stuff that takes place that Daniel speaks for to that takes place in the time of Christ, and we'll look at that fulfillment by a man by the name of Josephus.

That's the only historical stuff that we can go to. Any more questions?

We've got just a couple more. To answer a little bit more on the 77s, when we get there, we should not hold that the 77s are a strict -to -the -day 70 years.

We should not believe that. I think it's figurative. I think it's speaking symbolically.

Because even if you take that date, 603, and you go to the time of the decree,

I don't think there's anybody that will disagree that it was

Cyrus' decree, right? Cyrus is the one that gives the decree. He was told back in Isaiah he would be the one after the exile.

He gives a decree. When that takes place, it's actually 67 years. So, what the dispensationalists have to do is they have to move that front number.

We're going to move it back. We're going to say the exile actually started in 605. It didn't start in 605 because the first deportation didn't take place until Nebuchadnezzar had actually become king of Babylon.

And when Nebuchadnezzar defeated in 605 at the

Battle of Carchemish, he was just a general. He was not yet the king of Babylon.

Do you see how significant that is? He had to be king of Babylon because it says that the king of Babylon is going to be the one in Isaiah that's going to haul you off into captivity.

Well, Nebuchadnezzar was the one that did that in his first year. Yes, sir. Oh, you just turned your head like that?

Yeah. Okay. I do have something to say. Yeah, go ahead. It actually goes back. It's not on that. You mentioned

Antiochus in 166 and you said the temple, but you're referring to the second. That would be Zerubbabel's temple, right?

It would. Good point. The temple is going to be rebuilt during the time of what we just read,

Haggai, in our normal reading, Haggai and Zechariah. That temple was Zerubbabel's temple.

Now, there is war that takes place on the temple precincts with the Maccabean War.

That's how we know the Maccabees are a relevant historical document to read because it was actually

Judas Maccabeus, meaning Judas the Hammer, that comes in and liberates the temple from the

Seleucid Empire Antiochus. But that temple was never destroyed.

That's huge because that temple, although it was war -torn, it was never burnt to the ground like it was in 586 or 70

AD. So that means when Herod does come along in the time before Christ, actually he comes in around 42, maybe 42 or 36

BC, he comes along and then he starts fixing all of the precincts.

He makes it more elaborate. Remember, he's an Edomite. He can't be on the temple complex because he's basically outside the covenant.

But what he does decide to do is make it as elaborate as he possibly could and he was an architectural genius.

What he did to the temple complex that was destroyed in 70 AD was absolutely astounding. It was one of the seven wonders of the world.

But yeah, that's a good point. The temple had been rebuilt. So it was a rubables temple. They did have a time.

And as we're reading through Malachi, I think it's this morning we'll read through that part of Malachi or next week.

Malachi's talking about a time that's coming already. Remember, this temple's already been rebuilt from the exile and he's talking already there's coming a time, man, this place is going to get whacked again because you have violated

God's covenant. You have violated God's covenant. Now, chapter 7 and then we'll close.

Chapter 7, very messianic. This is where we see Jesus actually come onto the scene as far as prophetically.

He comes onto the scene. He has the name of the Son of Man. The Son of Man is then giving a kingdom.

And that Son of Man is then gives that kingdom to His people. And we will see that that is the church.

I don't think there's anybody that disagrees with that part. But there are going to be some stuff that if you have a study

Bible, your study Bible's not going to say what I'm saying. So, if it doesn't, and you're reading that and you want to know why are we different,

I don't care how old you are, raise your hand. Because it's important. We by and large, just to let you know,

American Christianity has been so inundated and our mind has been shaped with what you just said a minute ago, the futuristic view of Daniel.

That everything you get to towards the end of the book and all of the apocalyptic stuff, that that's not talking about in the time of Daniel.

That's at the end because it says, if you get there, and we'll talk about that part too, it says at the end.

Well, does the end always mean the end of all things? No. Hey, if the temple is destroyed in 70

AD, how would the Jews have understood that that's the end of our system?

And that is true. Judaism was over in 70 AD. When God sent

Titus to wipe it flat, it's over. That was the nail in the coffin for Judaism.

There's no temple, no sacrifice, that makes it, and I mean this not in a derogatory way, it's an irrelevant religion.

Judaism is irrelevant. If you don't have a temple, and you don't have an altar, and you don't have any sacrifice, that's what that system revolves around.

So, none of that, it's irrelevant. Because the true temple had come. So, I've got two minutes.

So you're a painter, are you going to paint the charts all around? I am actually going to draw them out, roll out the scroll of the seven distinctions.

Alright. One of you fine gentlemen want to pray for us? Father God, thank

You for this time that we have spent together. Thank You for Your Word, that we can open it, and that we can understand it, and we can dissect it, and discuss it, and I pray that our time in this class is meaningful and glorifying to You, that it opens the hearts and minds of Your people.

As we go to worship, I pray that we can worship You in spirit and truth. In Christ's name, amen.