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Dan dreams about beasts

Daniel 7&8
Sunday, 16th May, 2010

 Daniel 7:1

Today we move from the story of Daniel to the prophetic part of the book. Chapters 7-12 are a series of visions that Daniel had collected together. As a result we double back in time to the days of Belshazzar. He was king for about ten years in Babylon, although Nabonidus his father was still king of the empire, living in Tema.  The year is 550 BC the year Cyrus, King of Persia defeated Astayages, king of Media.

 

Daniel, a young man in 586BC when Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar is now around 46years old, a retired senior civil servant.

 

 

Lets read on.

 Daniel 7:2-14

Now that takes a bit of digesting. As is the nature of dreams and visions, they do not entirely realistic. A beast with four heads, Horns with eyes, horns that boast. But in the middle of all this is the ancient of days and the scene moves to heaven. In fact if you think I jumped to revelation you would have been in the company of commentators throughout history.

Hippolytus (ca. 170 – 236) writes that the Ancient of Days “is for Daniel, nothing more than the Lord, God and Master of all, the Father of Christ himself.

 Lets read a bit of Revelation to be clear that this is the court of heaven.

Revelation 4:1-35:1-5; 5:11-14 Page 1236

 

So whatever this meant to Daniel, we can see that it transports him into heaven itself. We will come back to that.

 

What does it all mean? Well Daniel had to ask and we can listen in on the answer.

 

Read Daniel 7:15-18

 

 This reminds us of the Statue in chapter 2. In fact the two dreams cover the same period of time.

The four kingdoms are the successive empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome.

The symbolism is clear enough to Daniel. He lived in Babylon, which had hundreds of these statues around.

  Where  a lion has wings and the head of a Nebuchadnezzar. This one is in the British museum.

 

 The bear fits the ponderous Persian empire.  History says that Xerxes moved 2.5 million troops against Greece.

Alexander as a leopard fits as well. He attacked Persia with a relatively small force but highly mobile and used it to great effect. But he did not last long and his empire was divided into four. Hence the four heads.

The terrible beast is Rome. The horns coming and going represent the divided nature of the Roman Empire.  But it also reappears in Revelation 17. In Revelation all empires are called Babylon, the Roman Empire in particular. Its fall is celebrated there. All empires fall, including the Turkish Empire, the British Empire, the German Empire, The Japanese Empire and the Russian Empire. So will the American Empire, The Chinese Empire and the Indian Empire, which are yet to come.

But what breaks through this dream is the kingdom of Heaven.  In the middle of the Roman Empire, in a rebellious colony, a child was born. When he became a man he started preaching the Good News that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Jesus was none other than the Son of  the Ancient of Days. And his primary mission was to bring about that kingdom. And he did it, not by raising an army like all other empire builders but by dying on a cross and defeating death itself by rising again from the dead to be seated at the right hand of the majesty in heaven.

 

Time does not allow us to get into detail here and it is dodgy to do so. The danger is that we become obsessed with the detail and take our eye of the main theme. Jesus is the King and his kingdom will overcome and become an eternal kingdom.

 

The return of the Roman Empire may confuse us because we like our time lines. But the kingdom was established on the cross. Jesus said so at the Last Supper he said “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until I drink it anew in my Father’s kingdom.”

The Roman Empire soon attacked Christians and tried to exterminate Christianity. 

If you don’t get all the story line get this:

Verses 26-27

We Win!

All over the world Christians are persecuted, abused, derided and held in contempt. But the kingdom of God is growing and growing. Over one third of the world’s population call themselves Christians. 7% are evangelicals. And the number is growing at 5% per year. God is building his church and the gates of hell will not prevail nor Islam or Atheism or Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese, Sikh or Jewish.

The battle is hard here and we seem to be losing. But trust God. You are on your way to heaven! We Win!

 

Verse 28

Daniel survived being overrun by the Babylonians. No wonder the idea of four empires coming and going filled him with dread. How many millions would die for man’s lust for power? 

 

Jesus gives life not death. His kingdom is in everyway different.

 

We move on to chapter 8. Whereas Chapter 7 looks at the Western side of these empires, chapter 8 concentrates on the Eastern side. 

 

READ Verse 1-2

Two years later than the last vision and in his vision he is in Susa. Susa is where we read of Esther. A prominent city of Persia. So he is transported forward in time.

Lets read on

 READ verses 3-14.

 

Again we can listen in on the interpretation of the dream.

 

This time Persia and Greece are being spoken about.

 So the three dreams have the same basic content. They are about the successive empires. This diagram puts them together.

I am not going to read verse 15-27 because of the time but instead I am going to put it in context of history.

The ram might be readily identifiable as a symbol for Persia. In the zodiac, Persia was under Aries, the ram.

The goat is about Alexander. In four years between 334 and 331 BC Alexander demolished the Persian Empire and established his own stretching from Europe to India. And then Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC.

His empire was divided into four – the four horns of verse 22.

the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt,

the Seleucid Empire in the east,

the Kingdom of Pergamon in Asia Minor,

and Macedon ( or Macedonia) .

 

On 30th May We will return to this as we look at chapters 10-12.

I want to stop you for a moment. A lot of Biblical studies students will tell you this was written long after Daniel. After all he is writing about things that happened as late as 321BC which would make him about 279 years old!

 

We are assuming that this is not prophecy. The question you have to answer is quite simple. Is this history or prophecy?

 

The narrative says that in 550BC Daniel knew in some detail events in 321 BC – 330 years later! So what do you believe?

Could God have revealed to his servant Daniel what was going to happen in the next 330 years or did some one else write it all up later and attribute it to Daniel?

 

Your answer will depend on a number of steps of faith. Do you believe that God could know world history before it happened?  Does he know the future?

Did he know the outcome of the general election and does he know what will happen to Europe in the next 300 years? In particular Great Britain in the next year or two?

Do you believe that God is working out his purposes through history?  To me the reason we have the prophecies of Daniel is to tell us that true history is about the Kingdom of God not the kingdoms of man.

Do you believe that Jesus is the culmination of all history?  In particular, do you believe that Jesus is the culmination of your history? It is Jesus that gives meaning to life itself. In these dreams we see that Jesus is a rock that crashes into a statue and then grows to fill the earth. We See heaven break into our world sweeping away the earthly kingdoms. And Daniel is looking forward. You and I can see that Jesus has come. He is the pivot point of history. But he told us that utopia was not yet. He said there would continue to be wars, kingdoms clashing, empires rising and falling. But the difference is not about human politics; it is that the kingdom is here. In Frank’s language of last week, we now have the choice between suicide and life whereas before we only faced death. Now there is a kingdom that permeates the whole of humanity as men and women all over the world turn from their sins and put their faith in Jesus. The kingdom is here. The question is “Are you part of it?”

 

The second question is which kingdom are you living in?  That was very significant in Daniel’s life. Each event recorded was where he chose the kingdom of God rather than the Babylonian empire or the Persian empire. He was at the top of the political game but he knew that his allegiance to God overrode his political ambitions. We know he chose God and risked death.

The battleground is much more subtle than you think. It is about how aware are you of the difference your values are to the prevailing values of today and whether you chose the Jesus way or let the crowd take you along.

 

How near is the kingdom?

 This is William Blake’s famous painting of “the Ancient of days” – it typifies the God on a cloud passing judgement but not really involved idea of Victorian liberal theology. What mattered on the ground was the advance of the British Empire! But we know what Daniel had no idea about that this kingdom is right here. God’s word is in your heart and in your mind. His Holy Spirit brings the kingdom into your home, your workplace, your mind and heart.

 It means that our view of politics is very different from others. We have no abiding city in this life we seek a city which is to come. We engage in politics because we are concerned for our fellow man, our nation, our world. But who runs the country for the next year or two is set in the context of an eternal plan which Jesus has for you.  You have a home, the guarantee of an eternity of good health, transport to heaven, a God who protects you and will never let go of your hand. So human politics we reflect a little of the glory of God into our human existence. But Daniel knew that all kingdoms fall, one by one except the eternal kingdom of God.

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