God's Man for a Time of Crisis, Pt. 1
Daniel 1:1-2
Daniel...the last in the books known as the major prophets and just before the
minor prophets in the Old Testament. I really believe that tonight as we begin our study of the book of Daniel, we embark upon a great adventure. This is one of the most fascinating and intriguing books in all of holy Scripture. It's a book that I have longed to pursue through all the years of my ministry and been anxious to come to this very moment that I share with you tonight.
Daniel, I guess, is to the Old Testament what Revelation is to the New Testament. Daniel is the book in the Old Testament that sweeps from a time of crisis in Judah's history to the Second Coming of Messiah and touches events all the way along. Daniel gives us a panorama of the history of the world. And really in saying that I...I have to add that at the same time it's an intensely practical book. You know, Peter had an important word for us. Peter said in 2 Peter, "Seeing that you know all these things shall come to pass, what manner of persons ought you to be?" Having insight into the future that has no bearing on the present is useless. Speculation about something that's going to happen that has no effect on what is happening is meaningless. Peter was saying that if you know what is coming to pass, it will change the way you live now. And I think that's a great truth for the book of Daniel for Daniel gives us the panorama of the history of the world to its consummation and in that very panorama lies the motivation to living for this very moment. And I think that if there was anything that solidified Daniel's commitment, if there was anything that drove his roots deep, if there was anything that made him stay faithful through 80 years of lifetime in a pagan society, I think it was the fact that the more visions he had and the more revelations he had of the future, the greater impact it had on his present life. In fact, John says in 1 John 3 that if we have this hope in us, we purify ourselves. If we really believe that this is going to come to pass, it changes the way we live.
So Daniel has two parts and tonight we're just going to give you a basic introduction to the book. And it's...it's going to be somewhat detailed and I don't really know how far we're going to get but this is a foundation upon which you'll build your whole comprehension of Daniel's prophecy. Daniel has two parts: the prophet and the prophecies, the man and his message. You might say in connection with the man it is here and now, in connection with the message it is then and there. And so Daniel is really two parts. Chapters 1 through 6 deal with the man and 7 through 12 deal with his message: 1 through 6, the prophet, 7 through 12, the prophecies. Although there is overlap in all of the book those seem to be the major thrusts. There is in the beginning of Daniel's book and also throughout the book a look at spiritual truth that is drawn from the uncompromising lifestyle of Daniel as he, a Jew in exile, withstood the onslaughts of pagan, heathen, Babylonian society. At the same time Daniel has visions, interprets dreams that lay at our feet, an incredible comprehension of the future of the world till Jesus comes. And so Daniel is a book for every today and for all tomorrows. Daniel sweeps through all of our lives to give us insight into God's standards. It tells me how to live for God in this evil age and it tells me what it will be like when I live with God in that golden age. Daniel has his feet on the ground, you might say, and his head in the clouds. With Daniel it is dreams and then it is daily living. It's all here. It shows how a man who sees the future can live to the glory of God in the present.
Now generally speaking, let me give you the setting of Daniel in the Old Testament. The Old Testament, at least in the Jewish mind, was divided into three parts. There were the books known as the law, the five books of Moses...Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy...the law, the Torah. Then there was the prophets and the prophets summed up everything from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel being omitted...Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and then all the minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. All of that was the Minor prophets.
There was a third element of the Hebrew text known as the Hagiographa, or the Holy Writings. The Holy Writings were everything that was left. And it was interesting that in the Jewish text Daniel was not included with the prophets but he was included with the Holy Writings because specifically Daniel is never called a prophet, at least in terms of the same word which is used for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and the rest. But whether or not the Jewish people put Daniel in the list of the prophets or not, believe me, he is a prophet. And that's why in your Bible you'll find him listed with the prophets. He has been traditionally classed as what is known as a Major Prophet, and that's only a designation of the length of his book, not its importance.
But Daniel finds himself associated with some pretty great men...Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel are the four known as the Major prophets, Jeremiah having written also the book of Lamentations. These four men stand out as great prophets of God.
Now we need to understand how Daniel fits in to those four so I want to share that with you for just a brief moment. Isaiah ministered more than a hundred years before the Babylonian exile. He ministered to the same people, basically, but he ministered in Judah and Judah was the Southern Kingdom. Remember that after Solomon the kingdom was divided into the north known as Israel and the south known as Judah. The north was ten tribes, the south was two...Benjamin and Judah. Isaiah mainly ministered, of course, in Judah and Isaiah was ministering a hundred years before the Babylonian exile and so he was ministering in a time of prosperity in Israel when the...or in Judah, rather, when the people thought everything was going very well. They were confident that everything was fine and yet Isaiah could see the spiritual state of apostasy. And so Isaiah was proclaiming the fact that judgment was coming if something didn't change dramatically.
Then there was Jeremiah. Jeremiah came some time after Isaiah. Jeremiah wasn't a hundred years before the end of everything, Jeremiah was during the last five kings of Judah's history. He was the prophet right at the end. And he saw the things that Isaiah began to see coming to full fruition. Jeremiah saw the captivity as very imminent.
Then there was Ezekiel. What about Ezekiel? Ezekiel prophesied to a group of exiles in Babylon. So moving along a time line it's Isaiah a hundred years before the captivity. It's Jeremiah imminent at the captivity. It's Ezekiel during the captivity ministering to a group of exiles captive in Babylon. I guess maybe that's why Ezekiel's message tends to be hopeful and the closing part of his book presents the glories of the kingdom to come, giving hope to that sad and exiled people.
And then there's Daniel. Daniel ministered during the exile also but not from the vantage point of moving among his people, but from the vantage point of being a great ruler in Babylonian society. He was a Jew in the midst of the world powers of Babylon and Medo-Persia. As we'll see when we study the book, there were four great world powers: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. Daniel's lifetime spanned the first two. He was there through the great period of the Babylonian Empire even to Cyrus who was the great monarch of the Medo-Persian Empire. His position was as a ruler in the pagan world. And from that vantage point he was God's man in a pagan society. So we see the distinction between the placing of these major prophets.
Something else you might note is that there is a thrust to their books that's unique. Each is different. Isaiah enunciates the principles of divine government. Jeremiah demands the practices, commensurate with divine government. Ezekiel portrays the person of the glorious Governor and His government to come. And Daniel speaks about the fact that that coming government is a permanent persevering and forever government. So they each have a special focus.
Now Daniel really zeroes in on the sweep of human history. He particularly speaks of a time called "the times of the Gentiles." The Bible says that there was a time when Gentiles would dominate Israel. That time began at the captivity when Israel was taken out of the land and removed to Babylon, and we'll see more about that in a minute. That time will end when Jesus comes back and gives the land back to His people. From the time of the captivity to the time Christ comes and restores Israel to its rightful place is known as the times of the nations, or the times of the Gentiles for it is the time when the Gentiles dominate God's land.
Now as I said, the book falls into two parts. You might say in 1 to 6 you have the historic night and in 7 to 12 you have the prophetic light. I believe there are four main purposes in the book, and I'm just covering some basic thoughts, don't try to put them all together in your mind, just probably you ought to get this tape and mull it over about every three or four weeks so you'll keep keeping yourself alerted to where we are in Daniel. There are four main purposes in the book. I want you to just get the general flow of it.
First of all, Daniel focuses on what true dedication to God means. You can't help but see this in the book of Daniel. Daniel makes this tremendous commitment to God and nothing changes it. He is never a victim of his circumstances. He never bails out no matter how tough it gets. He makes a commitment and he holds to that commitment and he is living proof of how God blesses committed people. I mean, you can't believe what happens to Daniel because he's committed to God. God just pours out blessing on him. And so it's a tremendous message of dedication to God.
Secondly, Daniel is a book about God's care for Israel. Some people think that when Israel went into captivity, God turned His back on them. Not so. When Israel went into captivity, God made sure that they had a representative right in the middle of a Babylonian government and He picked Daniel and Daniel was Israel's man in the White House. Daniel was there always to defend his people because God cared even in punishment. Jewish interest was always in the heart of God. And so even though they were captives in a foreign land, even though they lost their existence as a national entity God still loved them, cared for them, in fact only 70 years of captivity is all God allowed and then He took them back. And even during the captivity He allowed them to live in peace and have a very special man in a very high place to care for their needs and to give them hope. And through that man, Daniel, He gave tremendous prophecies of what it was going to be like in the future for God's people when their captivity was turned into glorious liberty.
And that leads us to the third element in the book of Daniel and that is a tremendous message of comfort for the Jews. Daniel is a book of comfort. It was terrible being punished in a pagan land and they would easily have forgotten that God cared except that God continued to give them the message through Daniel that He cared, also through Ezekiel.
And then finally, Daniel is given to us to lay out the story of how the world is going to end. What a tremendous book. It is a book that tells us about dedication to God and how God rewards that with blessing. It is a book that tells us about the love of God for His people Israel. It is a book that tells us about the hope for the future for those who are in captivity. And it is a book that tells us how the world is going to end. Tremendous, tremendous book! And so, as we look at it we're going to see the great eternal secrets of the future and yet we're going to learn how to live life right now. And you're going to see how marvelously blended these things are.
Now let me say this. Some people believe Daniel is the most important book in the Old Testament. I know why they believe that. They believe it because it gives us these four things that I just told you. They believe it because it lays out the panorama of human history. They believe it because it shows us what godly character is like. They believe it because it takes a crisis point in human history when there could have been a total abandoning of all that was holy and hopeful in God's people and it turns it around to a great story of hope and confidence.
And if Daniel is important, and I believe it is, whether or not it's the most important book in the Old Testament I wouldn't say, but if it is important then you can believe one thing about it, it will be attacked by the enemy, right? Because whatever is meaningful to the heart and soul of Christianity is exactly what Satan will attack. We know today that when a cult comes along and invariably will attack the truthfulness of the Bible and the deity of Jesus Christ because those are the cardinal things we hold to. And Satan attacks the book of Daniel because it upholds the truthfulness of the Word of God.
I want to show you what I mean. For quite a while in our society I suppose over a century now, well over a century, the book of Daniel has been attacked. And I mean it has been attacked constantly and viciously. What is being said about Daniel is simply that Daniel is a forgery. Daniel is not true. Daniel was not written by some sixth-century Jewish prophet predicting the future, Daniel is a forgery by some Jew who lived in 165 B.C. and wanted to pawn this thing off as if it were written by Daniel. And what the critics want to do, you see, is they want to say, "Well all of Daniel's prophecies were fulfilled in a certain man named Antiochus. And after Antiochus had lived and fulfilled all these prophecies, then Daniel wrote them...or whoever this man is...wrote them down under the name of Daniel as if he were living in the past and predicting it. And the whole thing is a ruse, it's a fake, it's a fraud." In fact, Doctor Crisswell in his commentary on Daniel says, "There is not a liberal theologian in the world, past or present, who accepts the authenticity of the book of Daniel. They all deny its integrity declaring the book to be a blatant, patent forgery. They define its contents as pure unadulterated fiction," end quote.
I took a course in one of the colleges that I attended in the prophets of the Old Testament. The professor told us that all of this is really not what it appears to be, they never predicted the future. They all really lived after their prophecies came to pass and then wrote them down as if they were still in the future so we'd believe they could tell the future. I went through a whole semester of that blood-curdling experience, listening to that.
Now you say, "Well why do they do this? Why won't they allow somebody to predict the future? Why do they get upset that the lions didn't eat Daniel? Why do they...and by the way, he suffered a lot more from the critics then he ever has from the lion...Why do they say you can't have people in a fiery furnace that don't get burned up? Why is it that they will not allow the miracles and the prophecies of Daniel to stand? And in order to get rid of them they say the miracles were just lies and forgeries and the prophecies were really written long after they happened, why do they do this?"
Basically it is because of this, it is because of what is known as modern rationalism. There is at the bottom of humanistic philosophy the idea that man's mind is ultimate and if I can't conceive of it and if I can't understand it by my rational mind, then it can't be true. And the rational mind cannot tolerate miracles because they violate reason and cannot tolerate predictions of the future because they do to and so if the mind is ultimate and I can't conceive of those things, then those things aren't true because my mind is ultimate. That's what rationalism says. It must be reasonable to the human mind. And if it isn't...deny it, label it fiction, get rid of it.
Now one thing that we want you to understand is that rationalism will never tolerate two things...miracles and prophecies. Because if there are miracles and predictions of the future, then there's something beyond the human mind. There's a God somewhere who can violate the norms of human existence and predict the future.
So in their attack on Daniel, the real issue...and I want you to remember this...is that they're trying to deny the miracles and prophecies of the book because miracles and prophecies, mark it, are signs of supernatural power. And rationalism, humanism, liberalism wants to get rid of the supernatural. Why? Because it wants to live its own sinful way without the fear of a God who will punish. You see? And so in the need to live your own life and not fear the consequences, you eliminate God in your thinking so that anytime somebody comes along and talks miracles and prophecies you deny it because if there are miracles and there are prophecies, then there is the supernatural and you don't want to allow for that. So Satan is inevitably trying to undermine the integrity of Scripture by deleting the miracles and the prophecies.
Now I really believe, people, that miracles and prophecies are the two greatest proofs of the validity of the Bible as God's Word. In studying apologetics, or the defense of Scripture, it's always been interesting to me that the two key things that Jesus banked His entire credibility on were miracles and prophecies. For example, in John's gospel Jesus repeatedly says this, "Believe Me for the works' sake." In other words, you ought to know I am God by what I do. And what did He do? He raised the dead, He gave sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, and all of these things. He fed the five thousand creating loaves and fish out of His hand. He walked on water. You see, He was saying, "Look at the miracles that I do. Do not they speak of My supernatural life?" Secondly He said, "Believe Me for the words that I speak." And just to show you how very specific that became, in John 14 and verse 29, listen to this, "And now I have told you before it come to pass that when it is come to pass you might believe."
In other words, Jesus says I have two credentials to prove that I'm God. One, My miracle works; two, My prophetic words, they then become the epitome of defense for the deity of Christ. And, beloved, as you pick up the Bible, the greatest proofs in the Bible of its truthfulness are its miracles and its prophecy. If that's true, then believe me Satan will attack at that point. And Daniel is a book of miracles and Daniel is a book of prophecies so Daniel is an attacked book.
Now basically speaking we usually say there are five categories in which we defend the truth of Scripture. And I'll just show you these real quick. Number one is experience. If somebody says to me, "How do you know the Bible is true?" I might say, "Well I've experienced it." Right? I've experienced it, I believe what it says and it works. And that's wonderful. And you have people stand up and give testimony and they say, "Christ came into my life and He changed my life and where there was sorrow there's joy, and where there was confusion there is confidence, and where there was unrest there is peace and Christ has changed my life." You might say, "I have studied the passage and I put them to...the principles into application in my life and my life was changed and my experience says that the Bible is true." And you want to know something? It does, doesn't it? But that's not always very convincing because lots of people have experiences. There are people who think they see pink elephants, but they don't. And there are people who go around in funny robes saying "Hare Krishna" who must have some kind of experience but it isn't the right one. And there are people who talk to little green men who crawl out of flying saucers and they have very vivid experiences, but I'm not sure they really have those experiences. Experience is fine but it doesn't really go far enough and we don't want to base the validity on the...of the Bible on our experience.
So let's move up the ladder to a second way we defend the Bible and that is through science. People say, "Well, is the Bible scientific?" You better believe it. The Bible says way back in the Old Testament, "The life of the flesh is in the blood," and it wasn't till the eighteenth century that William Harvey discovered the necessity of life coming...or the actuality of life coming from the circulatory system. The Bible says in the oldest book written that, "He hangeth the world on nothing," and I...I've read a lot of places in history where people thought it was on the backs of elephants who made earthquakes when they shook. Pliny, the Roman elder, says that, "The earth is on seven stages of honey, butter and syrup and stuff all mixed up." He's wrong. The Bible doesn't make dumb statements like that. It says, "He hangeth the earth on nothing." It says, "He turneth the earth like the clay to the seal." And they would roll it on a stick just like turning the earth on the axis. The Bible makes statements that are amazing.
Herbert Spencer died in 1903, he was given many awards in his life. The major thrust of his life was that he discovered five categories of knowable truth. He said, "All truth can be classified into five things: time, force, action, space and matter." And those five categories truly can encompass everything that exists...time, force, action, space and matter. And they hailed him as a brilliant scientist. The first verse in the Bible said that. "In the beginning (time), God (force) created (action) the heavens (space) and the earth (matter)." So we can say we can defend the Bible on the basis of its scientific accuracy.
But there's even something better than that. We move to a third defensive scripture and I like to think that the third one is the person of Christ. I think one of the great proofs of the truth of Christianity is Jesus Christ. You want to know something? Because of Jesus Christ I know men didn't write this Bible. I know this Bible isn't phony because men could never conceive of a person like Christ. And men would never write a book about a man who came into the world to condemn the whole world and tell all men how evil and sinful and hell-bound they were. Men don't write books like that. And Christ rose from the dead, and if you're having a problem believing it, His tomb has been empty for 2,000 years. Buddha's is occupied. So is the tomb of every other religious leader that ever lived, at least whatever what may be remaining.
But then we come to the final two defenses of Scripture and I think they're the greatest two: miracles and prophecy. You know, the German rationalists said, "If we can just get the miracles out of the Bible." And one German theologian finally got it all reduced down to 27 verses that were valid. Got all of them out of there. They used to talk about de-mythologizing the Bible, get all the miracles out. And you know, one day a man named Karl Bart woke up and said to himself, "You know, we've got all the miracles out of the Bible, you know what we have? We don't have religion anymore, we have philosophy." And he tried real hard to stuff the miracles back in but he didn't get them all the way in, he only got them half-way in and he invented a system called "neoorthodoxy," which isn't neoorthodox, it's not new or orthodox. It's like Grape Nuts, they're not grapes or nuts, or Christian Science, which isn't Christian or scientific. But he tried and he said, "We've got to have miracles." And so he wanted to get the miracles in but he didn't have the understanding to put them all the way in and so he said, "Yes I believe in them but they didn't really happen here, they happened in super-duper history." And you say, "Karl, what is that?" And he says, "I don't know." But, you see, at least he grappled with the fact that if you have a Bible with no miracles you don't have God, you've just got man. And if all we've got to get out of this mess is to turn to each other, we're in bad shape. Even the rationalists, some of them, realize the hopelessness of a Bible without miracles. Why? Because miracles simply mean God is active, that's all. Miracles are saying God is alive, God is operating. There's something beyond us, something outside us. And the fact that the Bible is full of miracles is not reason to deny it, but is reason to affirm that God wrote it.
And then there are prophecies, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. Some hundreds already fulfilled. God predicted that Tyre would be destroyed, it was. God predicted Israel would go captive, they did. God predicted the destruction of Egypt and its society, and it came to pass. God predicted the destruction of many places, and they collapsed just as He had said. God promised a Messiah and He came. And did you know that when Jesus came at least 300 prophecies were fulfilled concerning Him, all of them given in the Old Testament? Listen, the miracles and prophecies of the Old Testament are the heart of its defense of its divine origination.
Now when you come to Daniel, and you're going to get thrilled as we go through this, you will see miracle after miracle and prophecy after prophecy. That is why this book is so very important, and that is why it is so constantly attacked and maligned. If you're going to destroy the validity of the Bible, Daniel has to go. And that's why the attack is so relentless on Daniel.
Now by the way, Daniel is important then for our time because liberal theology is constantly attacking. I mean, there are books coming out all the time by liberal people attacking Daniel. We need to defend that. We don't need to defend it phil