Daniel has been mourning here in chapter 10, for the trials God had shown were to come upon his people, and he had sought assurance from God that they would not be destroyed by the particularly intense persecution that the last part of the preceding vision describes. In fact, he may have been troubled by even more immediate concerns. The third year of the reign of Cyrus in Babylon would have been the year 535/534 B.C., just a few years before his death. Continue reading ““SPIRITUAL WICKEDNESS IN HIGH PLACES””
“The Messiah Is Coming! When?”
There are many different interpretations trying to tell what the ninth chapter of Daniel mean. In Hebrew the word “seven,” means “a group of seven” something. It could mean a week because a week is a group of seven days, but it does not actually mean week. And in this case, it is a group of seven years. If literal weeks are involved, the prophecy is meaningless. If weeks of years are involved, then the time period embraces the years from the giving out of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the days of Jesus Christ. Continue reading ““The Messiah Is Coming! When?””
“Prayer and Daniel”
We do not show our spirituality when we abstain from prayer – “letting God do what God will do” – so much as reveal our carnality. The greatest women and men of God have been prayer warriors. After all that has been spoken and written by godly men on prayer, we need something better than that which is of mere human origin to guide us if we are to perform this essential duty. How ignorant and sinful creatures are to endeavor to come before the Most High God, Continue reading ““Prayer and Daniel””
“When Will the Messiah Come”
The section of Daniel we now come to, (chapter 8) is a decisive passage for all the various systems of prophetic interpretation. It has two main parts: a prayer of Daniel, which is a model of devout, humble, and effective prayer petition; and a concluding revelation, which was God’s answer to that prayer. This concluding prophecy concerns the Lord Jesus Christ and is a prediction, not only of the nature of His earthly ministry, but even of the precise time of his appearing and death. Continue reading ““When Will the Messiah Come””
“True Tolerance”
Even though Daniel’s loyalty to the emperor was established beyond question, Daniel was clearly prepared to swim against the tide of polytheism and assert his conviction that there was only one true God – the God of Heaven whom he worshipped. He was not prepared to compromise his position, even if the emperor commanded it. That left him open to accusations of being arrogant, narrow minded, bigoted, and anti-social. How could he possibly believe that he was right and the rest were wrong? Who did he think he was? Continue reading ““True Tolerance””
“How Daniel’s Prophecy Affects Us”
At the conclusion of chapter 8 Daniel describes his reaction to the vision and the explanation given by the angel Gabriel, saying, “I, Daniel, was overcome [exhausted] and lay sick for some days … I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.” His confession of failure to understand the vision must refer to his failure to understand why the devastation, destruction, and persecution of his people, which the vision foretold, should be necessary. It is the reason he was appalled. He was appalled in the same way any of us would be if God should give us a vision of some future period of great suffering. Continue reading ““How Daniel’s Prophecy Affects Us””