The Book of Daniel: Introduction, Chapters 1-2

So, we begin a study now in the Book of Daniel, the prophet Daniel. Daniel lived during the period of time known in Scripture as the Babylonian Captivity, and this would have been between 600 B.C. and 500 B.C. Daniel lived through most of that century. He was a very young man when the Babylonians came and took the Israelites captive, and he was involved throughout the period of captivity, which was 70 years, and was an old man at the end.

The book was probably written late in the period known as the Babylonian Captivity. Daniel actually survived the captivity and went on to also serve the Lord in the kingdom of the Persians, who conquered Babylon. But I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit.

Let’s see if we can find a good place to start here.

Daniel was a very young man, apparently royalty in Israel, at least one of those so-called princes of Israel who were theoretically qualified to be a king of Israel. That meant that he was from the tribe of Judah and also from the royal line in that tribe, a descendant of King David.

The period of time that we’re talking about is a time that was a very bad time for Israel. Several hundred years earlier, the kingdom had been split in two by a civil war. The northern kingdom called Israel and the southern kingdom called Judah split up over religious differences.

The northern kingdom went almost immediately into idolatry and had been conquered as a punishment for that, if you will, by the Assyrians about a little over a hundred years earlier. And now Daniel is part of what’s left of Israel, the southern kingdom called Judah, and they are repeating the mistakes of the northern kingdom. 

In fact, the Lord had Ezekiel ask the Jews at that time, you saw what happened to your cousins up north and you saw what that led to. Why are you then repeating this? You’re worse than they are because you have the lesson from their failure and you haven’t got the lesson, and so that makes you worse in my eyes. And so the Lord determined that He would bring the Babylonians to judge the southern kingdom as He had brought the Assyrians to judge the northern kingdom.

During Daniel’s lifetime, there were two other very powerful and very well-known prophets alive and also serving in the office of prophet during the time. Daniel, of course, was one, Jeremiah was another, and Ezekiel was the third. All three of these books were written about the same time.

Daniel went to live in Babylon first, about 605 B.C. Ezekiel followed in a second wave of captivity, about 597 B.C., so maybe seven or eight years later. Jeremiah was left to minister in Israel throughout the time of the Babylonian wars. (I don’t know how much history you want in all this, but I’ll give you a little bit more just so you’ll have the context here.)

The Babylonian kingdom came out of nowhere, they really came to prominence in the world from nowhere. Nabopolassar, who was the king of Babylon, had actually come from Kuwait. He was a Kuwaiti. And he had come and organized the tribes in the Arabian Peninsula into the kingdom that became known as Babylon and they became very powerful very quickly.

They defeated both the Assyrians and the Egyptians within a period of a few years. And about that time, Nabopolassar died and left the kingdom to his commanding general, who was also his son, Nebuchadnezzar. (Everybody’s heard that name.)

And so at roughly at age 20, Nebuchadnezzar was essentially the leader of the known world, having defeated both the Egyptians and the Assyrians. He was the power to deal with in the Middle East. And of course in those days, the Middle East, as far as anybody was concerned, was the known world.

We’re going to see a little later on that Nebuchadnezzar’s power actually extended well beyond what he even realized—that he was actually appointed by God to do all the great things that he did. And we’ll get a chance to learn a lot about Nebuchadnezzar’s life, along with the story of Israel and Daniel. And so as the Jews became more and more idolatrous, and as their behavior aroused God’s ire, He then raised up the Babylonians as a force, an agency, of judgment on His behalf.

In the Book of Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar is actually called God’s Anointed. And of course, the Hebrew word for Anointed is Messiah. And so Nebuchadnezzar was appointed by God to bring judgment against His own people for their evil ways, let’s call them.

Now, it turned out that one of the things that the Israelites had done was to disobey a particular law, that, by the way, is still on the books in Israel. That law was that one year out of every seven, all land had to lie fallow. In other words, you had to let it rest one year out of seven.

The Lord promised that to help them keep this law, He would make sure they got in year six of the cycle, a triple harvest—enough for the sixth year (which was normal) and then enough extra so they get through the seventh year when they had to let the land lie fallow, and then they also needed enough to get to the harvest of the eighth year, because in the seventh year, they not only didn’t harvest, they didn’t plant. The land had to just lay there.

So it actually took three years. And so the Lord promised them that if they let the land lie fallow one year in seven (it was called a Sabbath for the land) then He would give them this bountiful harvest in the sixth year so that they would be able to survive alright.

Of course this we know from agriculture, our knowledge about agriculture today, letting the land lie fallow every now and then replenishes it, makes it fertile again, and helps it to continue to produce good crops.

Well, for 490 years the Israelites had failed to keep this law. And so finally, the Lord got upset. And He said, okay, I’ve waited all this time to see if you’re going to do this, and you haven’t. It’s been 490 years. (Let’s see, divide that by seven.) And that means you have violated 70 of these Sabbath years. He said, you wouldn’t give them to Me one every seven like I asked you. And so I’m going to take them all in a row right now. And so for 70 years, you’re going to be out of the land. The other reason that you’re going to be out of the land is because of your idolatrous practices. 

And so the judgment that was coming upon Israel was partly caused by the fact that they had abandoned the Lord and gone into the worship of the pagan idols of the nations around them during the time. The duration of the judgment was 70 years so that the Lord could get His land Sabbath met. 

And so that put them back in compliance with the law. It’s just like if you borrow money to buy a car—you know, you’re supposed to make payments every month? After a few months, you don’t make your payments. The bank comes along and says, okay, you haven’t made your payments month by month. So now we want all the payments right now. And of course, that usually means that they get the car.

Because if you can’t make the monthly payment, certainly you can’t pay off the loan. And so that’s the way it was with the Lord. He said, you haven’t given Me one year in seven. And so I want 70 years, which is what you owe Me. I want them all now. So He sent Nebuchadnezzar.

And in 606 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar and his armies conquered the Assyrians and the Egyptians at a famous battle in history. You may have even heard of it if you study world history, it’s called the Battle of Carchemish, it’s up north in an area called Syria today. The Battle of Carchemish was a decisive battle in world history because the two competing world powers, Egypt and Assyria, were both defeated by this upstart Babylon in one battle.

And so almost overnight, these people came out of nowhere one day and the next day they ruled the world. And so you could see the hand of God in this. 

On the way back to Babylon from up north in Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar remembered something that his grandfather had told him about.

We’re going to read about—there’s two places in Scripture you can read about it. We’re going to read about it in (let me tell you in a minute) here’s 2 Kings 20. So we’ll look at 2 Kings verse 20 here for just a second.

I’ll give you just a little background here, and you’ll see that politics hasn’t changed at all in all these years. In 2 Kings 20 the chapter opens by recounting Hezekiah (who was the king of Judah) his illness, his miraculous recovery and how, you remember, the story the Lord granted him a longer life. (He was about to die, but the Lord granted him extra years, and it was symbolized by the sundial moving backwards there for Hezekiah.) So he recovered from his illness just like the Lord promised.

The king of Babylon at that time (just a little country down to the east and south) heard about the fact that king Hezekiah had recovered. At that time, Israel was a more powerful country than Babylon, and so the king of Babylon sent an envoy to Israel to pay his respects to king Hezekiah and congratulate him on the restoration of his health.

And so while he’s there, let’s look at verse 12. I’ll just read a little bit to you here. 

2 Kings 20:12:

2 Kings 20:12-13
At that time Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of Hezekiah’s illness. Hezekiah received the envoys and showed them all that was in his storehouses

Let’s read verse 13 again:

2 Kings 20:13
Hezekiah received the envoys and showed them all that was in his storehouses—the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine olive oil—his armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.

So he’s showing them how rich he is, basically. He’s bragging about his wealth. 

Verse 14:

2 Kings 20:14-16
Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked, “What did those men say, and where did they come from?”

“From a distant land,” Hezekiah replied. “They came from Babylon.”

The prophet asked, “What did they see in your palace?”

“They saw everything in my palace,” Hezekiah said. “There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them.”

Then Isaiah

(This is the prophet Isaiah.)

2 Kings 20:16-19
Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord: The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

“The word of the Lord you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?”

In other words he’s saying, well, I’ll be dead and gone by the time that happens so who cares? And so here was this Marduk-Baladan, Nebuchadnezzar’s grandfather. Nebuchadnezzar had heard the story of the wealth of Israel as a young boy. Having just conquered the two known powers of the world, and since it was on his way home anyway, he stopped by in Israel, laid siege to the city of Jerusalem, and basically took over the country.

He got a deal with the king of Israel that he would serve the king of Babylon. In other words, he would become a vassal to the king of Babylon, and in those days that meant paying tribute. And so Nebuchadnezzar started getting some income from this. And then there was the matter of making this deal secure, because Nebuchadnezzar was on his way back to Babylon. And so in those days, what they did was to make a deal secure, is they took some of the royal family hostage.

Nebuchadnezzar took part of the royal family hostage, just like Isaiah had foretold. He took them to Babylon and they were raised in Babylon as a guarantee that the king of Israel would behave and would pay his tribute whenever he was supposed to. You know, there’s an old saying that nations to achieve their wealth tax their people; empires to achieve their wealth tax other nations. And this is what Nebuchadnezzar was doing, he was levying a tax on the countries that he had conquered, and Israel was one of them. That’s how he derived his income. 

And so the royal family, a bunch of them, were sent to Babylon as surety, as a guarantee that this pledge would stay in place. One of those was Daniel, three others were three close friends of Daniel’s—Hananiah was one of them. I’ve got to get their Hebrew names here for you, because we all know their Babylonian names, but I still have to look up their Hebrew names. 

Hananiah, and Mishael, and Azariah. The first thing that Nebuchadnezzar did when he got them there is he renamed them because that’s part of what you do when you have a covenant like that, is the person gets a covenant name.

And so he renamed them. And of course we know their Babylonian names better than their Hebrew names, because Hananiah became Shadrach, Mishael became Meshach, and Azariah became Abednego,. And so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—you’ve read the stories about them, you’ve heard the songs—these were three friends of Daniel.

Daniel’s name, by the way, was changed to Belteshazzar, but it didn’t stick. Even the king still called Daniel, Daniel. I guess it was a sign of respect.

Sometimes he’d call him Belteshazzar, sometimes he’d call him Daniel. But it may have been due to the confusion over the fact that one of Nebuchadnezzar’s grandsons was named Belshazzar, and Daniel’s name was Belteshazzar—and so maybe there had been some confusion there. But anyway, that’s how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came to be.

So here they are, and they’re just young, barely in their teens when this happens. The deal was that they were going to be taken to Babylon and in exchange for being held hostage there, they were going to get the benefit of a Babylonian education. And so what Nebuchadnezzar decided to do was to educate them in the Babylonian language and educate them in what’s called the knowledge of the Chaldeans.

Now the Babylonians are sometimes called Chaldeans, but specifically the Chaldeans were a group of wise men, if you will. Sorcerers, some would call them. In some parts of the world they’d be called witch doctors. But they were the soothsayers. They were the sought-after people because they could tell the future. And they were part of Nebuchadnezzar’s advisors. So he had these people around him as advisors, and they called them specifically Chaldeans. 

Now just as a little aside, later on Daniel becomes head of this group, and when we get to chapter 9 we’re going to discover that Daniel was visited by an angel from heaven who told him when the Messiah was coming. (We’re going to read about that because Daniel knew and wrote it down exactly when the Messiah was coming and wrote it down so it would be public knowledge when the Messiah was coming. He also told when He’d be coming on the second time, and we’re going to see that too.)

But 480 or so years before the fact the angel told Daniel when the Messiah was coming, Daniel created from these Chaldeans a secret society whose job it was to watch for them. They knew it was going to be 400 or 500 years, and so they determined that they would pass this information down from father to son, that as sons became older they would join this society and they would know. And so when the time came, you know, ten generations down, they would know when the Messiah was coming.

Now these Chaldean priests became known to us in Biblical times as the Magi—and that’s the connection, that’s why the Magi showed up about the time of Jesus’ birth, because they had been watching for the signs for 500 years as it was told by the prophet Daniel. There’s also a tradition (as long as we’re talking about this) that Daniel is the one who provided the gifts for the Messiah: the gold, frankincense, and the myrrh, and specifically, the gold. It was that gold that Daniel provided for the Messiah, for the baby Jesus, that funded their flight to Egypt and supported them during the two years they spent there.

You might wonder, you know, they took off in the middle of the night with nothing, how did they ever survive in Egypt? Well, they survived because the wise men had been there, and they had brought this to Jesus on behalf of Daniel. Now that’s just a tradition, you won’t find that anywhere in the Bible, and maybe it’s not even true, but it’s an interesting little sideline, and I wouldn’t, having studied Daniel somewhat, I wouldn’t put it past him at all to do something like that, because that’s the kind of guy he was. 

So then, in 605, Nebuchadnezzar came, sacked Jerusalem, took the treasures from the temple, installed the vassal king on the throne of Israel making Israel subservient to Babylon, took the hostages as a surety, as a bond (among them Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego) and took them all back to Babylon. That was in 605 BC.

The agreement lasted until 597 BC. The king broke the agreement, thought he could get away with it, thought he could test him. Nebuchadnezzar came back and laid siege to the city again, took more money and more people. This time he took all the craftsmen and artisans out of the city—all the tradespeople, in other words, the people who could build stuff and make stuff and do things, he took them all. So all the skilled labor from Jerusalem was taken, and in that second batch, our friend Ezekiel went.

And that’s how Ezekiel got to Babylon. All of his writing is from Babylon. And that’s another fascinating story, Ezekiel’s life is also a fascinating story. And that left Jeremiah to prophesy for Jerusalem itself and be an eyewitness to the destruction of Jerusalem. And so during that period of time, you had Ezekiel and Daniel prophesying from Babylon, and you had Jeremiah prophesying from Jerusalem, all talking about the destruction of Israel and their captivity because of the idolatry and because of their disobedience to the law.

Finally, one more time, the truce broke down, the money stopped flowing, Nebuchadnezzar came and said, okay, I’m done with you guys now. And in 586 BC he destroyed the city, set fire to Solomon’s temple (first he took everything of any value that he could find, then he set fire to the temple), tore it down. He set fire to the entire city of Jerusalem, and he took all the Jews he could find and herded everybody off to Babylon. 

Now among those people was the grandparents of a woman named Esther. And that’s how she wound up in Babylon, because the story of Esther’s is the story of her relationship with the king of Persia. Persia had conquered the Babylonians a few years earlier, and so that’s how she got there. And so you see a lot of the famous Biblical figures are coming together here during this period of time.

And that’s the way it all worked out. So that’s the history. 

Now the Book of Daniel is broken up into a couple of parts.

The first half of the book has to do with the details of the story I’ve just kind of outlined for you, and the life that Daniel lived in Babylon, and the things that happened to him here. And we’ll see several important miraculous events that are circled around Daniel that tell us a lot about God and His relationship with people, and also have become stories that children hear for the very first times. Some of the first introductions that little kids get to God come from these children’s stories, several of which are very famous from the Book of Daniel, like the three boys in the fiery furnace, for example, and Daniel in the lion’s den, and all that. We’re going to read about all those things happening. 

That’s the first six chapters. Then beginning in the seventh chapter, Daniel writes some of the most remarkable prophecy, some of the most detailed and specific prophecy to be found anywhere in Scripture.

In fact, in just one chapter of Daniel, chapter 11, there are over a hundred specific prophecies that have been fulfilled and confirmed in history to show what God can do in talking about the future. Now, because of that, people have criticized the Book of Daniel substantially because there are people who don’t believe in what’s called predictive prophecy. They don’t believe it’s possible to predict the future.

Daniel’s prophecies are so specific and so dramatically fulfilled that people have tried to make the point that Daniel didn’t really write at least that half of his book, somebody else wrote it, and they wrote it well after the fact because nobody could predict something as accurately as he did. So the book therefore had to be written after the fact and what we call late dated.

Now, that has been very carefully, and how shall I say, emphatically taught in many circles of the church today. And so you’ll get many people who don’t believe Daniel wrote the Book of Daniel and you’ll get some people who at least don’t believe he wrote the second half of it, that there was a second person who claimed to be Daniel and that he wrote it during the couple of hundred years before Jesus came and pretended that it had been written earlier just to encourage the Jews during a difficult point in their history.

But as we’ll see, that story doesn’t hold up. And secondly, because the Book of Daniel has been so viciously attacked, it has also been very, very carefully documented. And so the result is Daniel has become one of the most carefully and completely and comprehensively validated books in the entire Bible.

And so the theory that Daniel was written by somebody else can only now be claimed by those who start from the premise of believing that it’s impossible to predict the future—not even God can do it. And so, that’s the way the book divides.

We’re going to spend the next little while on the first six chapters and then we’ll shift over to the prophecy, and you’ll see some extremely remarkable things. That’s where the prophecy of the First Coming, the prophecy of the Second Coming, the prophecy of the four Gentile kingdoms, the prophecy of the coming Kingdom of the Messiah, the prophecy of the Lord’s Second Coming, the events surrounding it, all of that we’ll see in the Book of Daniel sometime in the future. Because first we’ve got the first five chapters or six chapters to do.

And so with that beginning, I’m sure there’s a whole lot of stuff that I have left out, but in the interest of getting us started, let’s do that and we can come back and pick up some of this as we go. 

Daniel 1:1:

Daniel 1:1
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

Jehoiakim became the king of Judah in 608, and so this third year would have been 605, just like we just said. 

Verse two:

Daniel 1:2
And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.

Verse three now:

Daniel 1:3-4
Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility—young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.

Verse five:

Daniel 1:5
The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service.

And so a bunch of these kids that they’ve taken hostage from Israel are now being put into this education program with the purpose of becoming advisors and entering the king’s service.

Now remember, Nebuchadnezzar is only 20 here, 20 years old. And so to pick some teenagers to be trained to become part of his staff, if you will, who themselves are only going to be in their late teens and early 20s, is not an unusual thing to do. 

You see, Nebuchadnezzar has come to the conclusion here (I’ll just read between the lines a little bit for you) he has come to the conclusion that the advisors he’s inherited from his father are charlatans—that they’re fakers and they think they have him fooled. But he’s not fooled. And so he wants some people his own age around him. And as you’ll see in a minute, he’s going to put these old guys to the test to see if they’re legit or not.

But first we have a little more to go. Now remember: he’s got them together, they’re in a three-year program, he’s going to teach them the language and the culture and the literature of Babylon and then bring them into service. And he’s got them in his palace and he’s gonna feed them the same food that he gets—which is the best that the people have to offer, of course.

Now verse six says:

Daniel 1:6-7
Among those who were chosen were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

Now these names—it’s not important to us, but it’s just the Hebrew names all throughout the Scripture—the Jews named their children names that quite often spoke of God and of their faithfulness to God and of God’s power and of His wonder and all that.

In fact, Elijah, for example, the name Elijah comes from two names of God: Elohim and Jehovah. And so it’s the Lord is my God, that’s what Elijah means. Daniel—let’s see what does Daniel mean… Dani-el, El means God, so Daniel means God is my judge, because Dan means judge.

And so these are how these names went. Hananiah meant the Lord shows grace. Meshach meant who is what God is, and Azariah meant the Lord helps.

And so in those days it was common to have names like that that spoke of God. Well, the pagans couldn’t have people serving the king with names like that, and so they changed their names. Belteshazzar means Bel, who was the chief god of Babylon. (He was called Baal, by the way, by the Canaanites—same guy.) Bel, Bel protect his life, that’s what Belteshazzar means. Ashadrach means under the command of Aku, which was another Babylonian god.

And Meshach means who is what Aku is. See, Mishael, had meant who is what God is, and Meshach meant who is what Aku is, so he just changed the name of the god in the middle of his name. Abednego means servant of Nego, another god.

And so they all get pagan names. (That won’t be on the final exam, so you don’t have to worry about if you didn’t catch all that.) And so here they are, they got new names now, and they’re in the service of the king, going through the master’s program, if you will. When Daniel comes up to the guy in charge, and he says in verse 8:

Daniel 1:8
But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine

Now see, the problem is, Daniel’s Jewish. He keeps kosher, what we would say today. He’s following the Levitical restrictions on food. No such thing is happening in Nebuchadnezzar’s kitchen. The kitchen’s not kosher, and they’re not keeping to the Jewish dietary restrictions. And so Daniel doesn’t want to defile himself, if you can imagine this, by eating the king’s food. Can you imagine how the king would take to that? 

And so he says:

Daniel 1:8-10
and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel, but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.”

And so the guy in charge, he’s of the opinion that, hey look, you’re getting the best food that is available in Babylon and if you don’t eat it, you’re not going to be as healthy as the other guys who are eating it. You’re going to start looking sickly, and then the king is going to have my head for it, because I’m responsible. 

So verse 11:

Daniel 1:11-14
Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

So he got the deal. Ten days, he’s going to eat vegetables and water. And at the end of the ten days, if we look different from them, then you’re off the hook. You can put us back on the diet. You can do anything you want. It was that time. Just give us this ten days.

Verse 15 now:

Daniel 1:15-16
At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

And so the deal works out where they not only don’t look worse than the other guys, they look better, and so he lets them continue, because that’s going to look good to him.

So now we’re in verse 17:

Daniel 1:17
To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

By the way, do you know why they looked better, healthier? Because they’re eating healthier food. In those days the methods of preparation, the kinds of foods they ate—and if you look at the early dietary restrictions that the Jews were given, they’re not at all like the so-called kosher diet that the Jews follow today, although it does contain parts of them. But the kosher diet has gone well beyond what the Lord ever intended. If you go back in the Book of Exodus, you’ll find out that the Lord gave the Jewish people this special diet because He said, I am the Lord who heals you, and if you follow My ways, you won’t get any of the diseases that the Egyptians get.

Because you see, food preparation was not good in those days. It was not sanitary. The cooking was not always complete. Many of these kinds of foods have only in our lifetime been judged healthy again for people to eat. I can remember as a little boy (which was back in the 1700s, somewhere in there) I can remember when the government came out and said, we have now found a way to cook and preserve pork so that you no longer have to fear trichinosis from eating pork. Now, that was in my lifetime.

God prohibited pork to the Jews, you know, five, six thousand years ago. And that’s why, because it wasn’t healthy. You could die from it.

When the Israelites were living in the land of Goshen, up there in the Nile Delta plaza, living among the Egyptians, the average lifespan of the Egyptians was 35 years. But among the Jews, they were living three times that long. In fact, if you remember from the Book of Genesis, how amazed Pharaoh was when he met Jacob, Joseph’s father, and found out he was, what, 130 years old or something like that? It was incredible to him that anybody could live that long, because in Egypt, 35 years was considered an average lifespan.

Why? Because of the food they ate. They ate shrimp, which are bottom feeders, and they ate other kinds of fish, and they ate food that had just died—you know, roadkill. Whatever was there, they ate it. And if you look in Leviticus, and you see the foods that the Lord permitted, and the foods that he restricted them from, you see all the foods from which they were restricted are foods that carried diseases or promoted diseases or could not be prepared in a sanitary way in those days. And that’s one of the reasons why the Jews outlived the Egyptians.

And eventually, it’s one of the reasons why the Egyptians got to be afraid of the Jews, because they were living so much longer, and they were so much healthier, and they had so many more kids, that they were beginning to outnumber the Egyptians. And so that’s one of the reasons that they got in trouble. 

But anyway, the Jewish diet as it was given by God has been demonstrated throughout the ages to be a healthier diet, and we would all be healthier if we followed that diet today. In fact, there’s a great book you can get, if you want to learn more about this called None of These Diseases, written by Dr. McMillen. The son has just updated the father’s book, the father and son are both doctors. The father wrote the book a generation ago. The son has just updated it, and it’s back in print now. But if you’re interested in that kind of thing, you should get it. Because if we would follow the Levitical system in food—not for any legalistic reasons, but just for health reasons—we would all be healthier. But who wants that? [laughing] 

Okay, so that’s why Daniel and his guys looked better. Now, I’m sure the Lord accelerated this a little bit, so they would look noticeably better, because He wanted them to stay on the diet, because He wouldn’t want them to defile themselves.

Okay, we read 17—to these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

Now, at verse 18:

Daniel 1:18-1:21
At the end of the time set by the king to bring them into his service, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.

And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.

(Which would be 70 years.) So he remained in the court of Babylon during all that time. 

Daniel 2:1
In the second year of his reign, 

(This would be 604 BC now, one year after Daniel’s come there.)

Daniel 2:1-2
In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. 

These are the people he’s inherited from his dad. 

Daniel 2:2-3
When they came in and stood before the king he said to them, “I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means.”

Verse four:

Daniel 2:4
Then the astrologers answered the king,

—In Aramaic. Now, Aramaic is the language of the Babylonians. It was a derivative of Hebrew, but it’s the language of the Babylonians. Aramaic became the language of the Jews. In fact, during the time of Jesus, the most popular language was Aramaic. From this, from verse four of chapter two, down through the end of chapter seven, the Book of Daniel was originally written in Aramaic, because as you will see, the book from here until chapter seven has to do primarily with a period of time called Gentile Dominion, the time when the Gentile kingdoms were supreme in the world.

As we’re going to see in this dream that we’re going to review, they are going to outline the four major Gentile kingdoms that would rule the world from Daniel’s time until our time. And so you’re going to see we’re still in Gentile Dominion. It’s just now coming to a close.

In the Book of Luke, in verse… chapter 20, the Lord says—well, let’s read it, and that way I’ll give you the date right and the chapter right, because I can’t remember now if it’s 20 or 21. So let’s go and read. We’re going to be in the Gospel of Luke, and we’re going to be toward the end, let’s say.

Okay, it’s in chapter 21, starting in verse 24. Jesus is predicting here to His disciples the fall of Jerusalem, which is going to happen about 38 years after the crucifixion. He says, speaking of the Israelites:

Luke 21:24
They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations.

This is what we’re after here:

Luke 21:24
Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

He’s saying from the time when Jerusalem is conquered (which will be 70 AD) until the time when Jerusalem becomes a Jewish city again, will be in the times of the Gentiles.

So they effectively are coming to a close now because as of June of 1967, Jerusalem is once again an undivided Jewish city. Now there’s been all kinds of effort to redivide the city. And in fact, one of the major issues confronting the Israelis and the Palestinians today is whether or not Jerusalem is going to be divided again.

Well, the Bible says no, but the Palestinians say yes. And some of the Jewish government says yes, and I don’t know if anybody else really cares, but the Lord does and He says this is never going to happen again.

And so we’ll have to wait and see who’s right there. [laughing] (Yeah, good thing you laughed!) But anyway, that puts the time frame on this time of the Gentiles. It started with Daniel, and it continues into our time. 

And so, verse four:

Daniel 2:4
Then the astrologers answered the king, “May the king live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”

That sounds reasonable. Tell us your dream, lord, and we’ll tell you what we think it means. 

Daniel 2:5
The king replied to the astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble. 

This was his incentive plan. And he says:

Daniel 2:6
But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.”

Verse seven:

Daniel 2:7-9
Once more they replied, “Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”

Then the king answered, “I am certain that you are trying to gain time, because you realize that this is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me the dream, there is only one penalty for you. You have conspired to tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know that you can interpret it for me.”

So he’s basically leveling his accusation at him now. He says, you know, if you can’t do this, then I’ll know you’ve just been putting me on all this time, hoping that what you say will turn out right. But he says, if you can tell me the dream and interpret it, then I’ll know you’ve been telling me the truth.

It’s a little test, see, no big deal. 

Verse 10:

Daniel 2:10-11
The astrologers answered the king, “There is no one on earth who can do what the king asks! 

They’re right about that.

Daniel 2:10-11
No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer. What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among humans.” 

Verse 12:

Daniel 2:12-13
This made the king so angry and furious that he ordered the execution of all the wise men of Babylon. So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put them to death. 

Because remember, they’re in this group now. They’ve just graduated from their program and they’ve been tested by the king. They’ve been found worthy and they’re now part of the king’s advisory group, and so they’re under the execution order, just like the others.

Verse 14:

Daniel 2:14-16
When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact. He asked the king’s officer, “Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?” Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him.

Now that took some nerve because he’s going to say, look, give me a little while, I’ll figure your dream out.

Daniel 2:17-23
Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven and said:

“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
wisdom and power are his.

He changes times and seasons;
he deposes kings and raises up others.
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to the discerning.

He reveals deep and hidden things;
he knows what lies in darkness,
and light dwells with him.

I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors:
You have given me wisdom and power,

you have made known to me what we asked of you,
you have made known to us the dream of the king.”

Okay, now this by the way is a model for how we’re supposed to approach the Lord in things like this. 

The first part of the model has to do with reason. By that I mean not in the sense of having a reason, but in the sense of being a reasonable person and being able to reason. You know what? Most of us because of the weakness of our faith abandon the promises of God very quickly. We’ve read these promises and we know the promises but our faith won’t sustain us enough in times of trial to allow us to stand or claim these promises.

And so the first step in our understanding of our relationship with God is to exercise reason. Now Daniel’s not the only one who does this. In Hebrews 11 the writer talks about Abraham exercising reason and how it worked out.

In both cases they knew the character of God well enough to understand their position. Daniel knew that God did not bring him to Babylon with his friends, have them endure this three years worth of education, have them earn the favor of the king and have them demonstrate the superiority of God’s ways to the Babylonian ways just to have them executed right when they’re starting to become effective. Daniel reasoned that God would not do this.

Now in Hebrews 11 we learn that Abraham, he was asked to go and sacrifice his son at Mount Moriah. It says Abraham reasoned that since God had promised him this son and had promised him the kingdoms of all over the world would be blessed because of this, that God would not now kill this son or ask Abraham to kill him before any of this had come true, and if He did He was going to have to bring Isaac back from the dead. And so with that kind of faith both of these men acted.

It was a faith grounded in reason. Okay. Now that’s a big lesson for us.

We have to learn this because you see we can have faith when things are going well, and we can talk about how faithful you are and how great God is, and how wonderful are the things that He’s doing for us and how He’s blessing us. Anybody could do that. But the real test of your faith is to maintain that faith in His promises to you even in this face of what appears to be certain disaster.

We have to understand that God has made promises to us that He cannot break and therefore we can rely on Him even when things don’t look good. Okay. I’ll leave it to you to go back and document the seven thousand promises God has made to you.

We won’t try that tonight but I’ll just bet you that there’s one to cover any situation you might find yourself in. And is your faith (you’ll have to ask yourself this) is your faith a reasonable faith to the extent that it will cause you to claim these promises even in the face of what appears to be certain failure?

That’s when faith comes to the test, isn’t it? When things are going wrong. That’s when faith comes to the test. If God in Matthew 6 promised if you sought His kingdom first and foremost that He’d provide everything you need, are you going to believe that? Well, as long as you got a job and you’re making your mortgage payments and there’s food in the fridge, yeah, I’ll believe that.

But what happens when that all falls apart? Are you still going to believe it? See, that’s when the faith starts to come in, doesn’t it? If God promises that by His stripes we can be healed are we going to believe that? See what I mean? As long as we’re healthy, sure. But what happens when you’re faced with a diagnosis that’s not friendly and it doesn’t appear good, then what? You see what I mean? We don’t need to go into a whole lot of these, I think you get the point.

Daniel’s first step was to apply reason to his position and put it into perspective. Now, since he reasoned that God would not have put him into a position like this and then have it yanked out from under him before he could become effective—and here’s his first chance, by the way, to be effective—Daniel reasoned that the reason he’s in this position was to demonstrate to Nebuchadnezzar his effectiveness. And how is he going to do that? He’s going to tell him the dream and interpret it.

That’s what the king has asked for. And if God put him in this place to be an effective advisor to Nebuchadnezzar, then here’s his chance. So without consulting with his friends, without even praying, apparently, he went to the king and said, give me tonight, I’m going to go home, tomorrow I’ll tell you your dream and I’ll tell you the interpretation.

Gutsy. But he knew that God had the power to do this. And remember, it also says back up here in an earlier verse of Daniel:

Daniel 1:17
To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

So Daniel apparently already knew that he had this talent, that God had given him this ability. And so there again, he adds more reason to this. So he’s not going off as half-cocked as we might think, right? Okay, then step three.

First step was to reason through the situation. Second step is to take a leap of faith. Third step is to go home, get your friends and have a prayer meeting. [laughing] Imagine what they would have said when he came home. 

The fourth step is to wait for the revelation, wait for direction. And the final step is to give thanks when you receive it.

So those are the five steps that we should apply to situations. Reason our way through it. Try and figure out, knowing God’s character, what we’re in this situation for, what we’re supposed to do. Three, take a leap of faith. Four, take the matter to prayer. Five, give thanks.

Now this means you have enough faith to assume a positive outcome. But I think it’s a pretty good model. It’s a pretty good model for the test that we sometimes are called upon to go through.

Okay, verse 24:

Daniel 2:24
Then Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to execute the wise men of Babylon, and said to him, “Do not execute the wise men of Babylon. Take me to the king, and I will interpret his dream for him.”

So he goes to the executioner and puts a stop to the order on his own initiative. Verse 25—I love the way Ariok jumps in here: I found a guy who can do this. [laughs] He knows how to get points.

Daniel 2:25-26
Arioch took Daniel to the king at once and said, “I have found a man among the exiles from Judah who can tell the king what his dream means.” 

The king asked Daniel (also called Belteshazzar), “Are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it?”

Now listen to what Daniel says in [verse] 27:

Daniel 2:27
Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, 

This gets the other guys off the hook, you see—Daniel’s got some credibility now, and the first thing he does is get his friends off the hook. He’s going to earn points with them, too. 

Verse 28:

Daniel 2:28
but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.  

Now if you remember your study in Genesis, Joseph said the same thing to Pharaoh. When Pharaoh said, Joseph, can you interpret my dream? Joseph said, no, but God can, and He’ll give it to me. So give the glory where it’s due. Don’t take the credit like Arioch did, give God the credit.

Verse 28 still:

Daniel 2:28
He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you were lying in bed are these:

Okay, now here comes the story. Verse 29:

Daniel 2:29
“As Your Majesty was lying there, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen. As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greater wisdom than anyone else alive, but so that Your Majesty may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind.

Daniel’s saying, I’m not getting this because I’m bright, God gave me this so that I could show you what’s going to happen.

Verse 31:

Daniel 2:31-36
“Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

“This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. 

That’s [up to] verse 36.

Now, I imagine the king is fully attentive here at this point because he’s just been told the dream. Nobody on earth can do that. So now he’s really going to hear the interpretation.

Verse 37—and here you’ll see the extent of the power that Nebuchadnezzar was given here by God:

Daniel 2:37-38
Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. 

So he’s telling Nebuchadnezzar here, you’re not just king of Babylon, nor are you just king of the Middle East—wherever man or beast lives, you are their ruler. Nebuchadnezzar was king of the whole earth.

And he says:

Daniel 2:38
You are that head of gold.

So at the top of the statue. 

Verse 39:

Daniel 2:39-41
“After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay.

And verse 42:

Daniel 2:42-43
As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.

Now let’s stop here for a second because there’s a particular word used for clay here that you need to know about. You see, as you read this, you can think of clay as kind of that soft stuff you played with when you were kids, but that’s not what it meant.

This was, as you can see from verse 43, the iron mixed with clay, the people will be a mixture and not remain united—I’m sorry, verse 42: As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. 

The strong stands for the iron, the brittle stands for the clay, and what that means is the word in the Aramaic that is translated clay meant shards of pottery. So you take a vase, you break it, and it’s got a bunch of pieces of pottery, and you use that to try and make these pieces of iron stick together. And he’s saying, that doesn’t work. And that’s why the kingdom is partly strong and partly brittle because the iron and the clay don’t mix. Not only do they not mix, the clay is not even soft enough to glue the iron pieces together, it itself is very brittle. You get the picture? 

Okay. Now verse 44:

Daniel 2:44-49
“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.

“The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”

Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”

Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men. Moreover, at Daniel’s request the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego administrators over the province of Babylon, while Daniel himself remained at the royal court.

So this teenager now is suddenly the governor of Babylon and his three friends are his three administrators and everybody’s happy with that. He’s also, by the way, been placed in charge of the people whose lives he has just saved. 

All right, so that’s the dream of the so-called polymetallic statue. As you look back in history, (and we’re going to see this dream repeated in a different form in chapter 7) but as you look back in history, you see that while the statue depicts four kingdoms, that there actually have been four kingdoms who have ruled the world.

The first was Babylon, that’s the head of gold. Babylon was conquered after just 70 years. Right after the time of the Babylonian captivity was up, Babylon was conquered and ceased to exist as a kingdom. They were conquered by a coalition of Medes and Persians. The Medo-Persian Empire was this chest of silver. 

The Medes and the Persians ruled together. In fact, the Persians who started off as the weaker partner became the stronger partner. And so a lot of times you hear, is this just called the Persian Empire? They ruled the world for about 200 years. And they were conquered by the Greeks, Alexander.

And then the Greeks ruled the world for about 400 years and were conquered by the Romans. And then a funny thing happened—the Romans were never really conquered by anybody. They sort of fell apart out of their own decadence and were transformed from a political empire, if you will, into a religious entity called the Holy Roman Empire, about 400 AD. And they ruled the world until about 1500. And then components of this Roman Empire have had their time, but never really being fully in control of everything.

Spain was the world’s power in the late ‘14s, early 1500s. When the Spanish Armada was defeated and England became ruler of the sea, England became the dominant power, and then the U.S—all this time they were always offset by some other counter power.

You know, the U.S. was always offset by the Soviet Union. Nobody’s really been a world power all by itself. The U.S. has come very close in the last few years since the fall of the Soviet Union. There hasn’t been any really effective challenge. And this has driven the rest of the world crazy. You can see how they’re all trying to put together something to offset the power of the U.S. But the Bible says, and we read it in this passage here, that there will be another kingdom, a so-called revival of this fourth kingdom, Rome, at the end of the age.

And that’s what’s meant by the ten toes, the feet of clay and the toes of iron. And then, Daniel said, will come a fifth kingdom. This will be set up by God, and it will never be defeated, nor will it ever be given over to another. This is the Messianic kingdom that we know as the Millennial Kingdom that comes in the thousand years after the Second Coming. And so what Daniel has described here—what Nebuchadnezzar has dreamed about, and Daniel has interpreted for him—is this period of time that we know of as Gentile Dominion. It begins with Babylon, and then come the Persians, then come the Greeks, then come the Romans, and then come the Romans again, and then comes the Lord.

And so that is the way world government has pretty much transpired. By the way, you can see all these old powers coming back together because the Medes and the Persians—you know, the Medes are the Kurds of today, and the Persians are the Iranians—and they’re at each other’s throats over in the Middle East, and the Iranians are jockeying to do something here to destabilize, or at least diminish, or hopefully put an end to America’s power. That’s their stated goal. They want to knock America out because America stands between them and Israel. And so if they can knock America out, then there’s nobody to stop them from going after Israel, and when they do, that’s the Battle of Ezekiel 38, and then all bets are off on everything at that point.

And so you can see here that what Daniel has told Nebuchadnezzar then is how the future to them, history to us, is going to unfold, and that’s exactly how it has happened. Now this is just the first of Daniel’s many feats of wonder that will amaze and astound you as we go through this book. 

And as I said, we’ll see this same idea repeated. Here it is from man’s point of view—shiny, bright, valuable, very precious, precious metallics. That’s what these kingdoms look like from man’s point of view.

In chapter 7 we’ll see them from God’s point of view, a bunch of voracious beasts that destroy things. And so we’ll wait until we get to chapter 7—but I want you to see each one of these as you go down the statue from the head down to the toes, each one of them has become less valuable but more powerful. Each one less valuable but more powerful.

The head of gold, gold is the most valuable metal. The chest of silver represents the Medes and Persians. They were more powerful than Babylon, but silver is less valuable than gold. (You see how it goes?) Bronze is stronger than silver, but less valuable, and bronze represents the Greeks. Iron, strongest of all, least valuable of all, represents the Romans.

And so the integrity of these kingdoms has diminished through time until in this day and age there’s none left at all in any of them. And so all bets are off when it comes to wanting governments to do the right thing. Those days are over. I don’t care what government you’re talking about. 

All right, so now we’re about out of time, aren’t we? And so we’ll leave it here because I want to leave next time this image of the gold in the fiery furnace as a model of the Great Tribulation. And that’s something that will happen very soon in the world and we want to take enough time to cover all that. 

So that ends chapter 1 and 2, our first session in the Book of Daniel. We’re off to a good start; we’ve got a lot of stuff covered, and there’s a lot more coming.